Q.Explain the role of trade, transport and communication as components of the tertiary sector.

Trade, transport and communication are three of the most basic and widely spread tertiary activities.

Wholesale and retail trade buy goods from producers and distribute them to final consumers without changing their physical form. Transport — road, rail, air and water — physically carries goods and people between places of production, sale and use. Communication, including postal services and telecommunications, allows information to flow and coordinates decisions across dispersed locations, which is essential once production an …

Trade, transport and communication are often treated together because they perform closely related functions: connecting a producer, wherever located, to a buyer, wherever located.

Trade — divided into wholesale trade (bulk transactions, usually between producers/importers and retailers) and retail trade (sale in smaller quantities to final consumers) — is the activity that actually brings a good from the point of production to the point of consumption, without altering the good itself. In India, retail trade in particular remains a very large employer, much of it in small, family-run, informal establishments.

Transport carries goods and people physically across space, and includes road, rail, air and water transport as well as allied activities such as warehousing and storage. Without transport, a farmer's crop could not reach an urban market, nor could a factory's output reach its buyers; transport is therefore an essential complement to both the primary and secondary sectors, quite apart from carrying passengers in its own right. …

A frequent error is describing transport and communication only as consumer conveniences (travel, phone calls) while overlooking their essential supporting r …