BEIJING, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- China continued to see a deficit in foreign service trade in August with the volume enlarged, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) showed Wednesday.

The deficit stood at 29 billion U.S. dollars in August, up from 25.3 billion dollars in July, the SAFE said.

Income from trade in services stood at 18.4 billion dollars last month, while expenditures were 47.4 billion dollars.

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.

SAFE began issuing monthly data on 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 34 billion dollars in foreign merchandise trade, the SAFE said.