부산대학교 도서관

The services gain more and more importance in the context of the new digital era as their trade volumes and contribution in gross domestic product formation grow faster than in case of goods. This paper aims at analyzing the evolution of balance of payments in five non-euro Central and East European (CEE) countries, namely Poland, Romania, Czechia, Hungary and Bulgaria, during the most recent period of time, including the boom years following the financial and global crisis together with COVID-19 pandemic. The research findings show the analysed group of countries is a heterogenous one, there is generally a positive evolution of the balance of payments in all countries except the 2020 year, with the mention the Romanian services were less affected by social distancing, Poland has the most competitive services sector of all countries and last but not least the main sub-sectors were travel, manufacturing services on physical inputs owned by others, transport and telecommunication, computer and information services. Eurostat database was used in order to calculate trade balances, shares and trends of all sub-sectors classified after the IMF's and the United Nations' methodology of International Trade in Services. Although there are still missing data in case of few sub-sectors in some countries, the main provided services could be identified and a little light could be brought on the international trade in services of the analyzed group. The research might be continued with in-depth analyse of sub-sectors and also at the firm level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]