Why is there a difference between reported export value and the corresponding mirror data of the partner country?
Export statistics rarely line up exactly with the import statistics of partner countries.
More than 30 reasons have been identified. The main reasons include:
Trade systems: some countries use the special trade system (which excludes trade made in free zones), some others use the general trade system (which includes free zones).
Quantity measurement: some countries report gross weights and some others report net weights.
Time lag: discrepancies may result if exports are registered in one year and the corresponding imports in the following year.
Misallocation of a partner country or a product can occur for a reporting country. This only affects bilateral trade or respectively detailed product levels, not the overall trade.
Country confidentiality (recorded as "Area Nes", see the glossary about Area Nes) may have a direct impact on the overall discrepancies if the value of that flow is published in the total trade but not broken down by partner. Product confidentiality affects the results at detailed levels of the commodity nomenclature but have no impact, however, on the overall mutual trade statistics.
Re-exports (see the glossary about Re-exports) or transit may be taken into account by some countries. The United Nations recommandations state, among other things, that:
import statistics should be compiled by country of origin (recommandation 8.02),
export statistics should be compiled by last known destination (recommandation 8.09),
goods in transit should be excluded from trade statistics (recommandation 13.04). However the exporting country does not always know the final destination of the product. Furthermore the country of origin is neither the country that have re-exported the product nor the country where the product has transited;
Transportation and insurance costs are included in the reported import value (CIF: Cost Insurance Freight) but are excluded from the reported export value (FOB: Free On Board).
FOB: A trade term (Incoterm) meaning Free on Board (port of shipment). See www.iccwbo.org/incoterms/id3038/index.html for more details.
CIF: A trade term (Incoterm) meaning Cost, Insurance and Freight (port of destination). See www.iccwbo.org/incoterms/id3038/index.html for more details.
According to international standards, exports are valued FOB and imports are valued CIF. Some countries, however, do not follow this system. You may want to check on the UN Comtrade website comtrade.un.org/db/mr/daExpNoteDetail.aspx?nom=-30.
In addition, as far as we know, there is no modeling for converting FOB values in CIF and vice-versa.
All these reasons refer to each country's methodology of data compilation. The United Nations have made recommandations in "International Merchandise Trade Statistics: Concepts and Definitions" and the "Compilers Manual". To know to which extend a particular country comply with UN recommandation, please visit the International Merchandise Trade Statistics National Compilation and Reporting Practices page of the UNSD website.