Growth of the Services Sector and its Role in the National Economy

The services sector is heterogeneous and its configuration extremely complex. Hair dressing, hotel accommodation and public services to innovation, commercial licensing and intermediation of goods, services and information can all be lumped together in the services sector. The panoply of divergent definitions currently used to delineate the services sector brings out both its complexity and the inadequacies of the prevalent methods of conceptualizing service activities. The conceptual lacuna probably accounts for the use of such cryptic, and not-so-scientific definitions as: ‘A service is something you can buy or sell but cannot drop on your foot’. Not surprisingly, the conceptual and definitional ambiguity gives rise to problems of measurement and comparability, reflecting differences in national practices and the contexts in which the term ‘services’ is used, whether the transactions are within or across countries.