China continued to see a deficit in foreign service trade in July and the volume has expanded, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) showed.

Income from trade in services stood at 19 billion U.S. dollars last month, while expenditures were 44.3 billion dollars, resulting in a deficit of 25.3 billion dollars.

The deficit enlarged from the 22.1 billion dollars seen in June.

In contrast to merchandise trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transportation, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing, and accounting.

China has taken steps to improve the development of trade in services, including gradually opening up the finance, education, culture, and medical treatment sectors.

SAFE began issuing monthly data on the service trade in January 2014 to improve the transparency of balance of payments statistics. Since the start of 2015, it has also included monthly data on merchandise trade in its reports.

Last month, China saw a surplus of 32.6 billion U.S. dollars in foreign merchandise trade.