STATISTICS

Statistics is an inherent part of UNCTAD. Being the United Nations' focal point for the integrated treatment of trade and development and the interrelated issues in the areas of finance, technology, investment and sustainable development, UNCTAD compiles, validates and processes a wide range of data collected from national and international sources.

UNCTAD is committed to statistical excellence and making available high quality, independent statistics to inform research, debate and decision-making. The quality of the statistics compiled and disseminated by UNCTAD is supported by the UNCTAD Statistics Quality Assurance Framework.

Trade in services, 2018, annual bulletin

UNCTAD updates its comprehensive trade in services dataset and launches its first release of the Trade-in-Services Annual Bulletin. The Trade in Services Annual Bulletin monitors world services trade, focusing on the last years' developments, main regional trends and top traders. It provides a brief, yet manifold synthesis of the evolution of international trade by principal services and presents selected trade-partners information.

Digitally-deliverable services, 2017

At $2.7 trillion, services exports that can be delivered digitally are 5 times the value of ICT services exports, at $0.5 trillions in 2017. Thanks to increasing access to information and communications technologies (ICTs), services exports of both ICT services and of digitally-deliverable services have been growing at 7 to 8% annually over the past decade.

Handbook of Statistics, 2018

Reliable statistical information is indispensable for formulating sound policies and recommendations that may commit countries for many years as they strive to integrate into the world economy and improve the living standards of their citizens. The Handbook provides a wide range of statistics and indicators relevant to the analysis of international trade, investment and development.

Statistics and SDGs

The UNCTAD Development and Globalization: Facts and Figures 2016 is dedicated to the Sustainable Development Goals that were adopted by the United Nations in September 2015 (2030 Agenda Declaration).

Classic PDF version
Quick links: 2016 | 2012 | 2008 | 2004

DGFF 2016 website
http://stats.unctad.org/Dgff2016

UNCTAD is responsible for dealing with economic and sustainable development issues with a focus on trade, finance, investment and technology. Through these actions, UNCTAD contributes to progress on 52 specific Sustainable Development Goal targets, grouped under 10 of the 17 SDGs.

Statistics capacity building

UNCTAD, in cooperation with other UN agencies, development banks and international organizations, assists national statistical organizations in developing countries with the collection, compilation and dissemination of their statistics. UNCTAD also pioneers and develops new statistical concepts and methodologies in cooperation with expert stakeholders and member states.

At all times, UNCTAD coordinates technical cooperation activities with donors and other organizations to avoid duplication of work and to encourage complementarity and synergies.

Bulletins

These bulletins are designed to provide regular (monthly, quarterly, annual) overview of the evolution for a selection of topics and indicators.

Commodity Price Bulletin

Trade in Services Bulletin

Trade in Services Bulletin (Series)

Other statistical publications

Key Statistics and Trends in Trade Policy: Trade tensions, implications for developing countries 2018

Key Statistics and Trends in International Trade: The Status of World Trade 2017 pdf

Key statistics and trends in trade policy
Classic PDF version
Quick links: 2018 | 2017 | 2016

Key statistics and trends in international trade
Classic PDF version
Quick links: 2017 | 2016 | 2015

Inter-Agency initiatives

UNCTAD assists national statistical agencies in developing and transition countries in their data collection and dissemination efforts. In cooperation with UN agencies, development banks and other international organisations, such as Eurostat, capacity-building initiatives are carried out in various areas.

There are several common ongoing projects in the area of data quality improvement, statistics dissemination and communication, education:

Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA)
United Nations Statistical Commission
Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development
Inter-agency Task Force on International Trade Statistics (TFITS)
Inter-agency Task Force on Finance Statistics (TFFS)

Explore UNCTAD statistics in our data centre, compare key indicators from countries all over the world in our Country Profiles and discover a selection of key facts in our infrographic library.

Handbook of Statistics

The UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics provides users with access to internationally comparable sets of data, in addition to facilitating the work of the UNCTAD secretariat. The Handbook also presents a summary overview of the statistical time series available from UNCTADstat.

Classic PDF version
Quick links: 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015

eHandbook website
http://stats.unctad.org/handbook

Fact sheets

These fact sheets are designed to provide a short summary overview for a selection of topics or an introduction to a selection of indicators. The topic factsheets are typically taken from the Handbook of Statistics where accompanying tables can be found.

UNCTAD Handbook of statistics - Chapter 1

International merchandise trade

UNCTAD Handbook of statistics - Chapter 2

International trade in services

UNCTAD Handbook of statistics - Chapter 3

Economic trends

UNCTAD Handbook of statistics - Chapter 4

Population

UNCTAD Handbook of statistics - Chapter 5

Maritime transport

09 April 2019West Africa moves to harmonize trade-in-services statistics

Services trade data collection, analysis and sharing in West Africa gets boost as partners share results of first full survey on international trade in services.

11 March 2019Trade in electronic components drives growth in technology goods

A burgeoning demand the Internet of Things is propelling exponential growth in the trade of electronic components - to the benefit of developing countries, new figures show.

31 January 2019Three cool new statistics tools from UNCTAD

UNCTADstat has been hard at work building a series of innovative statistics tools which present fascinating insights in a new way.

07 January 2019Statisticians try to measure illicit financial flows

Statisticians have their eye on criminal supply chains and are collaborating to find ways to better map and measure illicit financial flows.