BEIJING - China continued to see a deficit in foreign service trade in May, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) showed on Tuesday.

The country's service trade deficit reached 111.7 billion yuan ($18.3 billion) in May, enlarging from 106.1 billion yuan in April, according to SAFE.

Last month, the country spent a total of 224 billion yuan in international service trade, double the 112.3 billion yuan it gained during the period.

Distinct from merchandise trade, trade in services refers to the sale and delivery of intangible products such as transportation, tourism, telecommunications, construction, advertising, computing and accounting.

The State Council has pledged measures to accelerate 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 payments statistics. Beginning in 2015, it added monthly data on merchandise trade to the report.

In May, China saw a surplus of 359.8 billion yuan in foreign merchandise trade, data showed.