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D. Examples of enterprise surveys conducted to collect missing trade data

4.16.        Survey of airline operators and of enterprises at airports. Data on the acquisition or landing of bunkers, stores, ballast and dunnage by national aircraft outside the economic territory of the compiling economy are generally not available from customs. Also, goods supplied to foreign aircraft at national airports are frequently not covered by the regular customs recording. Therefore, national airline operators and enterprises active at airports may be requested to provide the information needed to include these transactions in the international merchandise trade statistics. Such operators and enterprise could either complete a monthly questionnaire of transactions involving bunkers, stores, ballast and dunnage, or send a predetermined set of data records every month. In either case, the required information could be submitted electronically. The requested data elements on these transactions would, ideally, be the same as for the data collected through the customs declarations. Necessary elements are the date of the transaction, the trade flow (imports, re-imports, exports or re-exports), the HS commodity code, the trading partner country and the value, net weight and supplementary quantity of the transaction.

4.17.        Border surveys. Information on shuttle trade, i.e., “goods acquired by all categories of travellers, including non-resident workers, to a significant degree as defined by national law”, could be obtained through border surveys. Boxes IV.1 and IV.2 below presents the experiences of Uganda and Turkey in the conduct of such surveys.

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