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Home » Knowledgebase » UN Merchandise Trade » UN Comtrade Data » General » Availability » Data Availability in UN Comtrade

Data Availability in UN Comtrade

Data Availability in UN Comtrade

How to find out data availability

There are several ways to view data availability. Data availability is also available as downloadable XML files as Web Services. Here are three ways to visualize Data Availability:

(i) in Graph [Menu Data Availability -> In Graph]

Data Availability Graph

The filter part of the interface makes it possible to select the reporting country, commodity codes and years. Two bars at the top and bottom of the filter area allow the User to select a year range and a geographic entity (e.g., European Union), instead of a country and one or more years. The Lookup links brings an already met interface that makes it possible to select commodities by their names instead of their codes, or to select standard Favorites.

In this interface, the results are contained in the same form as the filter values, and displayed as a bar chart. All the classification types are used and appear with different colors. Moving the mouse cursor over a bar displays the real number of data records, like exemplified above.

Data Availability (# of reporters or # of records) is shown as bar chart by commodity classification. It is also possible to define the selection filter.

Difference between data query and data availability menus in UN Comtrade database

The data query section explains how to retrieve information on commodities (e.g. quantities in terms of trade value, mass or number of items exported), whereas the data availability section deals with the amount of data records collected for a given selection whatever the type they are.

(ii) in Tag Cloud & Map [Menu Data Availability -> In Tag Cloud & Map ]

Tag cloud visualizes data by combining font size and color. As a general rule of thumb, the bigger the font, the bigger the datasets are available.

Another way to show is using the world map which provides a familiar background to the user and adds a layer to show availability of data.

(iii) Interactive [Menu Data Availability -> Interactive]

Data availability interactive is a basic filter form for extracting specific data from UN Comtrade. Choose the options that best suit your query. For your convenience a drop down list is available for each of the choices with the number of available records for the classification selected.

You have option to choose
(a) all reporters regardless of whether they have data or not, or
(b) only those reporters with data.

Please note that the * indicates that the data reported was converted using a correlation table.

What do the numbers in the bracket reflect in the data availability interactive page?

- Numbers appearing next to the 'revisions' in step 2 reflect the total number of records available for that revision in the UN Comtrade database.
- Numbers appearing next to 'reporters' , 'years' and 'trade flow' reflect number of records available for that revision all combined.
- The dollar amount appearing next to the selected commodity reflects the trade value of the commodity for the selected revision, reporter, year, and flow all combined.

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Data availability, query