China recorded a smaller deficit in service trade in October, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) showed on November 26.

The country's service trade deficit reached 105.6 billion yuan ($17.25 billion) in October, compared with 133.4 billion yuan ($21.73 billion) in September.

Income from trade in services stood at 75.9 billion yuan ($12.36 billion) last month, while expenditure in service trade reached 181.5 billion yuan ($29.57 billion).

In the first 10 months, the aggregate service trade deficit totaled 824 billion yuan ($134.23 billion), with 1.05 trillion yuan ($171.1 billion) in revenues and 1.87 trillion yuan ($304.8 billion) in spending.

The SAFE started to issue monthly data on the services trade in January 2014 to improve the transparency of the balance of payments statistics.

Distinct from merchandise trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products like transport, tourism, telecommunication, construction, advertising, computing and accountancy.