UN COMTRADE captures the UN21 Award

   The UN Statistics Division (UNSD) will receive the prestigious United Nations UN21 Award for UN COMTRADE - a comprehensive online trade commodity database with more than a billion trade data series. It is the repository of the most authoritative global commodity trade statistics from over 150 countries classified by commodity and partner countries. The trade series covers 40 years of data and more than 5000 different products. This comprehensive collection of online statistics features a user-friendly interface with various options for data mining, exploration and visualization.

  UN COMTRADE which is updated daily, currently receives more than 200,000 page visits each month and has become a model trade system that is now being implemented by other international organizations like OECD and FAO for the production of their specialized commodity trade data.

  The UN21 Awards were introduced by the Secretary-General in 1996 as part of the management reform effort to provide recognition to staff members for innovation, efficiency and excellence in the delivery of the Organization’s programmes and services. Projects have been submitted from across the global Secretariat for consideration for the 2005 UN21 Awards.  Evaluation teams, made up of a wide cross section of staff members drawn from across the global Secretariat, reviewed and evaluated projects in each of the designated categories, and made recommendations for “awards” or “commendations” in each project category. The project categories are: Knowledge Management, Process Reengineering, Improvements in Working Environment/Morale, Substantive Programmes, Field-based Projects, Team and Individual Productivity.  

The Award for UN COMTRADE was bestowed in recognition of its merits in the category of Knowledge Management.