BEIJING, July 31 (Xinhua) -- China continued to see a deficit in foreign service trade in June but the volume has narrowed, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) showed Tuesday.

Income from trade in services stood at 20 billion U.S. dollars last month, while expenditure was 42.1 billion dollars, resulting in a deficit of 22.1 billion dollars.

The deficit retreated from the 27.6 billion dollars seen a month earlier.

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.

The 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 50.5 billion U.S. dollars in foreign merchandise trade.