Dataset description and subject overview

The United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade) contains detailed imports and exports statistics. Containing over 1.1 billion records, the UN Comtrade Database is considered to be the most comprehensive trade database available. The database is continually updated and whenever trade data are received from the national authorities they are standardized by the UN Statistics Division, using the UN/OECD CoprA internal processing system, and then added to UN Comtrade. Commodities are classified according to SITC (Rev.1 from 1962, Rev.2 from 1976 and Rev.3 from 1988), the Harmonized System (HS) (from 1988 with revisions in 1996 and 2002) and Broad Economic Categories (BEC).

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• Countries List (http://comtrade.un.org/db/mr/rfReportersList.aspx)
• Commodities List (http://comtrade.un.org/db/mr/rfCommoditiesList.aspx)

The extensive database includes the following topics:

• Food and live animals
• Beverages and tobacco
• Crude materials, inedible, except fuels
• Mineral fuels, lubricants and related materials
• Animal and vegetable oils, fats and waxes
• Chemicals and related products
• Manufactured goods classified chiefly by material
• Machinery and transport equipment
• Miscellaneous manufactured articles
• Commodities and transactions not classified elsewhere in the SITC

All commodity values are converted from national currency into US dollars using exchange rates supplied by the reporter countries, or derived from monthly market rates and volume of trade. Quantities, when possible, are converted into metric units. Commodities are reported in
the current classification and revision (HS2002 in most cases) and are converted all the way
down to the earliest classification SITC revision 1. Therefore, if data is received in HS 2002
version, it is converted to HS1996, HS1988, SITC rev. 3, SITC rev. 2, SITC rev. 1 and BEC.

Photo by: Magalie L'Abbé,
Creative Commons, Flickr.

In general, the UN recommendation is to use older classifications (SITC, Rev.1 and SITC, Rev.2) to obtain long time-series and use recent classifications (HS-2002 and HS-1996) for more detailed information. A lot of modern technology was not available at the time of the introduction of SITC, Revision 1 (around 1960), which means for instance that it is difficult to find the classification for PCs, color printers or mobile telephones. The newer classifications (like HS-2002) will have more clearly defined commodities for those mentioned items, but only more recent years of data can be found.

At ESDS International the UN Comtrade Database is delivered via the UN's own interface rather than the Beyond 20/20 delivery software used for the other datasets in the ESDS International macro portfolio. The UN interface provides several different methods for querying data (Shortcut Query, Basic Selection, Comtrade Explorer w/Map and Express Selection) however we recommend the Express Selection method as it is easy to use and contains a wider range of options.

User Documentation

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• Software guide for accessing UN Comtrade via Express Selection (www.esds.ac.uk/international/support/user_guides/un/comtradewe.asp).
• Countries List (Microsoft Excel, 63.5kb)
• Commodities List (http://comtrade.un.org/db/mr/rfCommoditiesList.aspx)
• Commodity Classifications (Microsoft Excel, 7.11MB)
• Data Availability Tool
  (http://comtrade.un.org/db/mr/daYearsNewResults.aspx?nom=-30&px=ori)
• Glossary (http://comtrade.un.org/db/mr/rfGlossaryList.aspx)
• Reference Tables
  (http://comtrade.un.org/kb/article.aspx?id=10102&cNode=4Y8M0A)
• First Time User Information
  (http://comtrade.un.org/kb/article.aspx?id=10062)
• Data Query and Extraction - User Manual (PDF, 645kb)
• Metadata and Reference - User Manual (PDF, 241kb)
• Data and Availability - User Manual (PDF, 159kb)
• UN Comtrade Yearbook (http://comtrade.un.org/pb/)
• UN Publications - Trade (http://unstats.un.org/unsd/pubs/gesgrid.asp?class=trade) provides a list of trade related UN Publications.

Note: You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader software to read documents in pdf format. It can be downloaded free of charge from the Adobe website. (www.adobe.co.uk/products/acrobat/readstep2.html)

Accessing the UN Comtrade Database

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Creative Commons, Flickr.

To access the ESDS International macro-economic datasets you must be a user from a UK higher or further education institution. We cannot provide data to users outside of this community due to the data re-distribution license agreements we have with our data providers. If you are a member of a UK higher or further education institution access to the macro-economic datasets is provided free of charge.

Access to data requires ESDS registration and uses the federated access management authentication system. Registration is a simple online process - go to the How to Register web page at www.esds.ac.uk/aandp/access/access.asp to begin the process.

Once you have registered with ESDS and attempt to access one of the macro-economic datasets, you will automatically be prompted to agree to additional dataset specific conditions if they apply.

Countries in the UN Comtrade Database

UN Comtrade provides statistics for over 200 countries and areas (http://comtrade.un.org/db/mr/rfReportersList.aspx).

Periodicity and Time Range

The United Nations Comtrade Database contains data from 1962 onwards, although not every series starts from that date. The database also contains projections up to 2050 for demographic and environmental indicators.