Foreign trade, understood as balance of income flow between residents and non-residents, constitutes, apart from consumption, investments and state expenditure for the purchase of goods, part of the gross national product (GNP). Compiling data on this phenomenon in a more comprehensive manner allows for a better understanding of the impact of foreign trade on economic development, employment and economic independence of individual countries.

The growing demand for data on foreign trade obliges domestic and international institutions responsible for collecting, compiling and publishing statistical data to create more and more new compilations of these data in order to better reflect the economic situation of individual countries or their groups. An example of such compilation is the dataset on foreign trade in goods by enterprise characteristics (TEC[1]).

As part of the statistics of international trade in services, such a task is to be fulfilled by the sets of data on services trade by enterprise characteristics (STEC). Methodology of international trade in services by enterprise characteristics (STEC) compilation as well as datasets enclosed below were developed with co-financing of the European Commission under the following grant agreements: International Trade in Services 826274—2018-PL-B2773-ITS, International Trade in Services 879398-2019-PL-B244476-ITS and EBS Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 Implementation: Methodology and new data requirements (previously FRIBS Regulation) 101022360 — 2020-PL-B5640-EBS.

Both TEC and STEC output data represent an important first step towards integration of international trade and business statistics. In compliance with the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European business statistics (EBS Regulation), 2022 is the first reference year for which Member States of the EU are obliged to compiled STEC tables.