Determinants of intra‐COMESA trade in services

Abstract This paper analyzes intra‐Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) trade in services by establishing its determinants and exploring the role of trade facilitation on the same. The study relies on the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimator of the gravity model on bilateral services trade data for total services and eight categories of services in 17 COMESA countries from 2005 to 2019. Results reveal that several factors determine intra‐COMESA services trade, the salient ones being GDP (exporter's and importer's), distance, contiguity, and time zone differences. Trading under a service‐specific trade agreement affects a few services: transport and other business services exports. The effect is positive for transport services and negative for other business services exports. Trade facilitation measures, especially broadband technologies, significantly improve services trade across various sectors. A key policy implication of our results is that service trade is more likely to grow through digital, information, and communication infrastructure development. Thus, policy should prioritize increasing access and usage of broadband technologies.