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ECONOMIC COMMISJION.FOR AFRIC~
Second Conference of African Statisticians 26 Junel 1961. Tunis
Item
7
~c) of the Provisional AgendaEXT~RNAL TRADE STATISTICS
E/CN.14/S t a t/L.17
DOCUMENTS OFFICE
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JoINO TO BE TAKEN JUT
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( N¢te by the Statistical Office of the United Nations )
1. The Fundamental Importance of external trade to the indep••dent oountries of Afrioa requires that the statistios of trade be reviewed in order that they may meet the many demands for regular and up-to-date information on this important aspect of the economy.
2. This paper is intended to acquaint the Conferenoe with steps recently taken by the United Nations Statistical Commission to enable oountries readily to compile the type of statistical data for their
trade that they require. The Commission took into aooount the imp4rt~t
fact that external trade statistics are largely based on reoords obtained by oustoms administrations in the form of import and export declarations.
It reoommended in May 1960 that trade-by-commodity statistics be based on the United Nations Standard International Trade Classification which, in its revised form (SITC, Revised), combines a statistical olassifioatiom and a customs nomenclature.
3.
Copies in English anQ,Frenohof a preliminary edition of tao EITC, Revised, will be distributed at the Conference to members ofdelegations. Printed editions are in preparation and will be sent to governments as soon as they are available. Alphabetic indexes showing the classifioation in the SITC, Revised, of about 20,000 individual oommo- dities are being prepared by the Statistical Office together with lists showing the principal articles classified in each item of the SITe, Revised.
Beoause the differences between the SITe, Revised, aDd the original SITe are minor, the original and the revised cl&Ssificaticns are comparable to one another-.
E/CN.14/Stat/L.17
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"4. The original SITC has been in use for more than ten years.
The oountries of Europe and of North America, as well as most countries of Asia and Australia and NOH Zealand now regularly produce statistics according to the SITe, 1.':ryAfrican country also compiling statistip!, on that basis can, thus, immediately compare its data'with those of the principal countries
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th which it trades. A number of the countries of Africa which are in the Co:nmonwealth have already taken advantage of the oonvenience of the SITC as a basis for trade statistics.5,
For thos!'! of the African councries whose customs nomenclatures are based on the 1955 Tariff ,Nomenclai,uro(BTN) of the Brussels CustomsCooperati,~nOounoillthe introduetionof ths SITC, Revised, for Statisti- cal purposes will be particularly e asy beoause tJ'e SITC, Revised, oontains
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all the items of that nomenclature but arranges them in statistical order to me~t the needs of economic analysis. This r0-a~~angementis necessary,
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because the BTN arrange~ont, be iuS based on traditional principles of classification, is unsuited to general purposes of eoonomic analysis.
Reoognizing this, the C~st6ms Coope ratr on CouncD. has generously cc'lla- borated ih the'development of the SITe, ReVised •. Furtheremore;' where i t was, for" statistical pt.rposes, noo e asa.ry to subdivide a
B'l'N'
heading, the CCliiilbi1h~s crca tedihe nece e sary Gto.tis tical cUb-headihgs Within the BT-N'and' ha'", r-acoramended their Lnoo r-por a tion ;,n the l'egal' tar;' ffs or sta-tistleal nomencia"cuTcs of its Clembers.
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6,. . 'I'he items of the SITe, ::levi sed, are identified by a five-d~~it code so designed that summa.rization by i'''Klched eo.rd machi.nc on the die;i ts
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of the code automatically proclu~.es data. by economic classes. Thull,. for instanoe, summarization on the first digit makes it possible to obtain data'ln' each'cf the :toll~Wing classes:
Food Chemioals
Ravr materials other than fuel Simple manufactures
Beverages,and tobacco Machinery and tra.nsport equipment
Fuel Other manufactured goods
Fats end oils Coromodities not classified by kind Summarization on the thircl digit p r oduce s data in 177 grou;Js such asi
"coffeelt, "cottonl l, !liron and steel ·~'lil.'etl, "road moter vehicles", "donas ta c
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electric equipment", Analysis by coun'trip., of origin and dos tf.na td.on of most of these 177 headings j.s often required for economic studios.
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E!rw ,).4!stat!t.:'...'1• Pa.ge 37.
One of the principal difficulties experience~by countries whioh base publication of external data. on a customs nomenclature of the traditional type is that the headings of the nomenclatu~e are too numerous (1,097 in the case of the BTN) to permit their analysis by countries of origin (for imports) or of destination (for exports). Moreover the headings are not organized into economioally meaningful groupings on which analysis by countries of origin or destina.tion could usefUlly be based. As explained above, the SITe, Revised, permits groupings at a number of different levels. A oountry oan thus take advsntage of the fuil detail where it is of inportanoe in the trade of the country but show only summary data (at the group or s ectLon level) in areas of leeser ..'importa.nce..~-:
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Once a government has decided tha.titwants to take advantage in its st~tistics of the possibilitie~ for summarization offered bythe SITC, Revised, on an internationally comparable basis, ,the governme.t may wish to deeide how this can best be brought about in praetice. If it is possible to arrange that the commodity code entered in ~mport and export declarations is based on the SITe; Revised, the entire process of summarization can reaOily be carried out by punched card machine ~r
in the small countries, by a manua'l, process. In oae e the customs' tariff is in another order than that of the SITC~ Revised (for instance in the BTN order), this can b e ac comp'Ld.ahe d by '1laking an edi ti on of the tariff '. ~~ whichtbe SITC number as well as tte tariff number is shown next to
each.heading and"'!, ' . re~uiringthat ~t bb thp. SITe number which is entered in. declaratione. The Customs Coo?er~t.ic>n CvuJ'cil is preparing an adi tion of t.be BTl'! in which the atatistio8.1 riu-nber- a c 1'1011 as the l;i·N number is shown for each item. Becauc e eacr SIIi; n\)",'ver determines in such a scheme
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1\ urrique tariff number, t'le tariff can ~·:-&.:Jily ba ad:ninistered on the basis of the statistice.l numbr.r. I" this connexi.on cne United Nations Statistical Commission expressed the following view (E/3375, para.
62).
"The Commission fel t thai; the essential requiremer.t for a customs tariff nomenclature ·;as for ec.ch ocmmocn. ty to be olassified under a well-defined heading; the ordGr of the headings was less important for tariff than for statistical purposes. Due to the one-to-one
correspondence with the items of the BTN, the SITO, Revised, provided, 1n effect, a list of customs headin~s so ordered as to yield stat~s
tioally meaningful d~ta without the necsssity of reclassification."
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E/CN.14/3tat/L.l{
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, A number of oountries, of which one of the most important is Indi&, base oustoms reoords on the SITC number even though the tariff is published in a different order.
9. Most European countries ba,ae customs reoords on the tariff number but, since even they cannot'provide analysis by countries of origin and, destination for all the numerious headings of the tariff,
the~ reclassi~ the data into the SITe order for this purpose. This reclassification is dcne by machine but has given oountries oonsiderable difficulty; ccuntries whose statistical resources are limited are likely to wish to avoid the necessity for such reolassifications.
10. Realizing that trade-bY'""C0untry statistics should be based on an ~te list of the other coUntries with which the.reporli.ng..,ooun,tTY -'trades, the United Natic1'l.s Iconondo and Social Council has requested
(380 B (XIII)).
the government of eaoh Member State in compiling tra.de-~OU1!ltry
statisti<Ds to use, as far as i t is able, as the d.a;finitiDn off,.the territory with which i t has traded the definitiOn of that territory for oustoms purposes provided by the government conoerned.
"The Customs Al'ilas of the World" is It list of such definitions of
territories issued in 1959'by the St~tistical Office of the United nations (Statistical Papers Series ,M number 30, Sales No~59.XVII.5)~ A Corrigendum has been issued this year to take aoeourrb of reoe.ntohanges in eustoins
_,iI-+,eM.. many of them in A,frioa., This paper, together with the oorrigenda Leeued, from time to time, will, enable countries to base the analysi's of their statistios by countries on current information.
