BEIJING, April 26 (Xinhua) -- China continued to report a deficit in foreign service trade in March, official data showed Friday.

The deficit stood at 20.5 billion U.S. dollars last month, slightly down from 20.6 billion dollars in February, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) said.

Income from trade in services stood at 21.8 billion U.S. dollars last month, while expenditure was 42.3 billion dollars.

In contrast to merchandise trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transport, 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 service trade in January 2014 to improve the transparency of balance of payment 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 38.7 billion U.S. dollars in foreign merchandise trade, up from 8.5 billion dollars in February. Enditem

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