External Trade of the Czech Republic
Comment on Methodology of External Trade Statistics | Contents |
The evaluation of external trade is based on data processed by and taken over from the Directorate General of Customs.
The source of data on exports and imports found in this publication are customs statistics based on customs documents, i.e. Single Administrative Documents. In terms of legislation, the production of external trade statistics has been laid down by the Customs Act No. 13/1993 Coll., as last amended, and implementing regulations No. 252/2002, Coll. and No. 253/2002 Coll. of the Ministry of Finance.
Export and import data should be regarded as preliminary ones. A peculiarity of customs statistics is the fact that data published are continually updated during each subsequent processing by those Single Administrative Documents (SAD) that were not included into the previous processing for one reason or another. As soon as these SADs get into processing, they are always included into the period when the goods indicated on the SAD were cleared. Therefore, published monthly data are subsequently updated.
As far as the methodology is concerned, external trade statistics of the Czech Republic are now fully comparable with those of the EU and EFTA member countries.
In terms of contents, all the data published in the Statistical Information are comparable with those published in 2000. The Directorate General of Customs of the Ministry of Finance and the Czech Statistical Office (CSO) reclassified some countries into higher units from 1999 onwards in compliance with the “Geonomenclature“ used in the EU member states. According to these recommendations, for instance, Turkey and Cyprus belong now to Europe (in contrast to Asia up to 1998) and are classified also as European market economies (they previously belonged to Asian developing economies). Also Slovakia is included among the OECD member states from 1 January 2001.
The data on trade paid by USD in Table 1 - „The Global Survey of External Trade“ - are based on the average exchange rate in a given period, as reported by the Czech National Bank.
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With respect to the revision of data for January – November 2002 statistics on price trends (unit values) in external trade for this period are not published.