Statistical confidentiality in international trade
International trade is a highly regulated field where governments play the crucial role of collecting, processing and publishing trade statistics. We, as citizens, can access this data, but statistical confidentiality can sometimes make it difficult to access real statistics on trade transactions in the international arena. Within these statistics are data related to exports and imports classified according to TARIC codes that break down goods and services into specific categories. However, in publishing these statistics, governments must strike a balance between ensuring transparency and protecting the confidentiality of trade data, which is a challenge due to the principle of statistical confidentiality.
What is statistical confidentiality as applied to TARIC codes?
Statistical confidentiality, in the context of international trade, implies the obligation of governments to protect information that could identify a company or an individual exporter in public statistics. Sometimes, when a country reports the total value exported under a very specific TARIC code, the information might allow to recognise details about a company’s trade activity if it is the only or one of the few companies trading that product in foreign markets.
In order to avoid this risk, statistical offices often apply anonymisation techniques or refrain from publishing certain data when the level of disaggregation is too specific and compromises confidentiality.
Problems arising from the application of statistical confidentiality
In some cases, data protection may limit the amount of information publicly available, resulting in analysts, researchers and interested companies facing an incomplete picture, making it difficult to assess markets or competition.
Large companies with advanced market analysis resources may be able to address the limitations imposed by statistical confidentiality, while SMEs often rely on public statistics to plan their business strategies, and misinformation can put them at a disadvantage.
Statistical confidentiality can be interpreted as a barrier to access to information in a context where governments and institutions promote greater trade transparency, in a context where actors may argue that the lack of detailed data makes it difficult to identify unfair practices.
How to deal with the dilemma of statistical confidentiality?
Companies have the right to access real import and export figures and data on which to argue and justify their business strategies. It is for this reason that Exportest detects statistical secrecy and shows the real and complete figure of exports from one country to another under a TARIC code. How does it do this? Exportest collects the data published by the countries for both imports and exports and compares them with each other to provide the highest figure, in which the real figure of the total number of transactions of a product from one country to another is shown. In addition, when Exportest detects that there is statistical secrecy, it shows both the FOB data declared by the exporting country and the CIF data declared by the importing country, so that you can have the most complete information when selecting the most potential markets to which to direct your product.
Do you want to have real global data on international transactions and know your most potential markets? Do not hesitate to subscribe to Exportest through this link, and if you have any queries, you can fill in the form below this article or call +34 965 651 725.
Exportest has been developed by Oftex, an internationalisation consultancy with more than 20 years of experience. Visit our website to find out about the rest of our services.