UNSDInternational Merchandise

Trade Statistics

Data Collection, Processing and Dissemination

Marjorie Imperial-DamasoEGM on Intra-African Trade Statistics5-7 October 2011

UN Comtrade

- The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) maintains a detailed merchandise trade statistics database as mandated by the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC)

- The database is called UN Comtrade and it contains annual trade data (imports and exports) by reporting country or area, commodity and partner country, for most countries of the world

Our Users

• Internal Users– World Export Matrix for Monthly Bulletin Statistics (MBS) tables– World Pocket; Country Fact Sheet– UNdata

• Re-dissemination Users– World Bank: WITS (World Integrated Trade System)– ITC: Market Access Map, Product Map,etc– OECD– CEPII: BACI; MIMAS via proxy server; Wiser Trade; GTIS;

Quatrax; etc• Other Users

– UN member states; various international/regional organizations– Governments, Academics, Research Institute, Private

Companies

Work Process

• Data Collection

• Data Processing

• Data Dissemination

Data Collection

• Joint data collection with OECD• Data Request Letter sent out to countries beginning of each year

(with exception of OECD countries)• Email reminders and follow-up letters are sent throughout the year

for non-responding countries• Data sharing from FAO, ITC, UNCTAD, Economic and Regional

Commissions• As of September 2011, we received and processed detailed data for

110 countries representing 88.2% of world trade of 2010 (28 African trade data to date)

• Countries are requested to forward us the latest data, as well as monthly or quarterly, If available.

• To improve accuracy of our database, official annual totals are also requested for years 2000-2010 (latest) and confirmation of metadata on file for their country.

The required data fields for transmission are listed below: Field Name Recommended Field Content Reference Year Gregorian calendar January to December Period Annual, month or quarter Trade Flow Imports, re-imports, exports and re-exports Commodity Code According to the Harmonized System (HS) at the most

detailed commodity level available (6-digit HS) Partner country or area In national nomenclature; country of origin for imports and

country of last known destination for exports Value In national currency or US dollars; CIF for imports and

FOB for exports Net weight In kilograms Supplementary Quantity In the WCO recommended standard units of quantity Supplementary Quantity Unit WCO recommended units for HS headings New data fields following the adoption of IMTS 2010 (include if already available)a Second partner country or area In national nomenclature; country of consignment for

imports and country of consignment (destination) for exports

Second value for imports In national currency or US dollars; FOB for imports Mode of transport The means of transport used when goods enter or leave the

economic territory in the encouraged nomenclature provided in IMTS 2010, para. 7.2 or national nomenclature

Custom procedure code (or applicable transaction code)

Code of the customs procedure applied to individual transactions by customs; any applied procedure or transaction code if customs procedure codes are not available or if additional codes are used

Data Processing

• Data processed at the most detailed level.• New processing system called CoprA to replace

previous mainframe. Went live beginning 2006.• CoprA is a web application based on .NET

platform that uses MS SQL server to store and access the data.

• MS Access us used as intermediate format between original format and SQL Server table

Four main parts in data processing

• Data preparation and import

• Data Normalization

Four main parts in data processing

• Data preparation and import

• Data Normalization

• Data Aggregation and checking

• Data Conversion

Challenges/Difficulties in Data Processing

• Non-compatible format with MS Access– PDF– Word

• Annual Totals– Totals are not aligned with country series

• Non-oil Exports data for oil producing countries• No data lay-out• No Quantity Unit (QU) description• High level processing

– Presence of confidential data• High incidence of invalid commodity codes resulting to big

memorandum items (MI)• Incomplete metadata/explanatory notes

– Trade system, cif/fob, partner country attribution

Data Dissemination

• UN Comtrade

• Publications

- International Trade Statistics Yearbook

- Monthly Bulletin of Statistics

- Statistical Yearbook

- World Statistics Pocketbook

• UNdata