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.

In focus

Merchant fleet, 2019

In 2019, 23 per cent of ships have 71 per cent of the carrying capacity. The world merchant fleet is more than 96 000 ships strong. These ships have a total carrying capacity of almost 2 billion dead weight tons, in 2019. Out of these ships, 23% carry dry bulk (such as iron ore, coal, grain and the like) or crude oil and its products. Together they account for 71% of carrying capacity.

UNCTAD takes the pulse of global goals

UNCTAD launched an online statistical review of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on 25 June during its annual Trade Development Board meeting. The SDG Pulse presents analyses for a range of indicators relevant to trade, investment, financing for development, debt, transport and technology.

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.

Statistics and SDGs

The purpose of the SDG Pulse is to highlight recent trends in sustainable development and UNCTAD’s work to support the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.

Development and Globalization: Facts and Figures 2016

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

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

31 October 2019UNCTAD and partners make progress on measuring illicit financial flows

Quantifying the total value of illicit flows that are draining resources for development is a key step in tackling them.

02 October 2019Introducing the challenges of measuring Illicit Financial Flows to the International Statistical Community

At the World Statistics Congress in Kuala Lumpur, UNCTAD held a session entitled “Multinational profit shifting and illicit financial flows – can we measure them?”.

09 September 2019Regional workshop on merchandise trade statistics

UNCTAD, the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the African Union Commission (AUC), and the South African Revenue Service (SARS) hosted a regional workshop on International Merchandise Trade Statistics in Johannesburg, South Africa from 24 to 28 June 2019.

09 September 2019Harnessing the Data Revolution

At the International Statistics Institute World Congress, in Kuala Lumpur, Steve MacFeely, Head of Statistics at UNCTAD, presented a new paper on the opportunities and risks associated with using unofficial statistics to compile SDG indicators.