Balanced International Merchandise Trade Statistics (BIMTS) - HS2017-2D

The OECD Balanced International Merchandise Trade Statistics (BIMTS) dataset provides a complete, consistent, and balanced matrix of international merchandise trade statistics. It includes annual bilateral data for approximately 200 reporters and partners, covering around 98 products in HS2017 at the 2-digit level from 1995 to 2023. BIMTS is also available in the HS 2017 classification at 4-digit and 6-digit levels of aggregation currently available via the Related Files (bottom of the page) and also in the Statistical Classification of Products by Activity (CPA 2.1) at the 2-digit level of aggregation.

• BIMTS is complete and consistent. The OECD methodology leverages all available official statistics and combines them with estimations and adjustments to provide users with a complete matrix covering virtually all economies in the world. To provide users with consistent and long time series, the data is presented according to either HS2017 or CPA 2.1.
• BIMTS is balanced. The OECD has developed a transparent approach to reconcile asymmetries in international merchandise trade statistics. A sequence of adjustments, documented in the BIMTS technical paper, significantly reduces asymmetries in the dataset before the final balancing procedure is performed.

An important feature of BIMTS is a novel algorithm which identifies re-export flows and reallocates them to the producer countries before the balancing. To avoid double counting of flows between producers and trade hubs (already accounted for in the trade between producers and final users), BIMTS breaks down the final balanced values into a domestic component and a re-exports component. Users will therefore find two different measures of balanced trade flows (under the ‘Adjustment’ dimension):

• Total balanced value: Represents the total reconciled bilateral trade flow, including re-exports.
• Balanced value adjusted for re-exports: Represents the reconciled bilateral trade flow, adjusted for re-exports. This adjusted value is deemed to more accurately reflect economic reality and is therefore the preferred measure.

In this database, the Reference area denotes the exporter , while the Counterpart area denotes the importer. Because the data are balanced, exports from the exporter to the importer equal imports by the importer from the exporter, and the flow is therefore recorded only once. Note that zero trade flows are represented in BIMTS as missing records (marked as “..”). This approach reduces the dataset size and improves processing times in the OECD Data Explorer. For convenience, users can also retrieve data for total merchandise (“_T”, denoting all products) and partner world (“W”).

BIMTS will be regularly updated and continually improved as new data becomes available.

For more information on:

• The methodology: The OECD Balanced International Merchandise Trade Dataset (BIMTS).
• Balanced trade statistics related pages: Balanced trade statistics, or
• The statistics compiled by the OECD Statistics and Data Directorate

Users are encouraged to send their questions, or to signal any apparent errors, regarding this database to STAT.Contact@oecd.org