Trade indicators

by Sonia Blachier · June 7, 2021

Map 1. Trade openness index, 2021

(Percentage)

Note: This index measures the importance of international trade in goods relative to the domestic economic output of an economy. Exports are given equal weight to imports.

How important is trade for economies?

In 2021, Hong Kong SARSpecial Administrative Region remained the most open economy to international trade, as indicated by the trade openness index of 182 per cent. Singapore (115 per cent), Viet Nam (115 cent), and Djibouti (100 per cent) ranked second, third and fourth. The index stood at 17 and 16 per cent respectively in China and India. Japan and the United States of America recorded an index score of 15 per cent or below. Iran is identified as the least open economy (5 per cent).

How did the relative price of exports to imports develop?

In 2021, the terms of trade improved in almost all geographical regions, except Asia, where they declined by 0.6 per cent. The largest increase of 23.3 per cent was recorded in Oceania, followed by Africa (22.3 per cent) and Northern America (7.1 per cent). The terms of trade of European countries was 1.6 per cent higher than in the previous year.

Figure 1. Terms of trade index

(2015=100)

Note: This index indicates how much the relative price between exports and imports has changed in relation to the base year.

How concentrated is global product supply?

Figure 2. Market concentration index of exports

Note: This index measures the extent to which a high proportion of exports is delivered by a small number of economies. It has a value of 1 if all exports originate from a single economy.

Large differences persist in the degree to which global supply is concentrated among exporting economies. Over the past 17 years, manufactured products have been the product group with the highest concentration of exports supply among economies with the index score averaging 0.19 for the period. In 2021, it stood at 0.21, as compared to index scores between 0.12 and 0.15 recorded for the other product groups. Fuels (0.15) remained the group with the second highest market concentration of exports.

How concentrated was the structure of exports?

Export diversification varies significantly across regions. In 2021, the highest concentration of exports over products was recorded by Western Asia and Northern Africa (0.28), followed by Oceania (0.27) and Sub-Saharan Africa (0.22). Exports of European (0.06) and Northern American (0.08) economies were more diversified. Five African countries with strong reliance on exports of natural resources had the world’s highest product concentration of exports: the South Sudan (0.93), Botswana (0.89), Mali (0.89), Guinea-Bissau (0.88), and Chad (0.87).

Figure 3. Product concentration index of exports, 2021

Note: This index measures the extent to which a large share of exports is accounted for by a small number of product groups. The index has a value of 1 when an economy exports only one group of products and a value of 0 if all product groups are equally represented.

Concepts and definitions

This section presents different indices that can be used to analyze trade flows and trade patterns over time from the perspective of, for example, relative competitiveness, structure of global exports and imports markets, or the importance of trade for the economy, both for individual economies and for groups of economies.
For information on how the indices in this section are calculated, see on the Calculation methods page. The presented indices are a subset of the trade indices available at UNCTADstat -—
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Summary tables

Table 1. Selected trade indices by group of economies

(2015=100)

Developed economies

Developing economies

Developing economies: Africa

Developing economies: Americas

Developing economies: Asia and Oceania

Table 2. Selected trade indices, landlocked developing countries

(2015=100)

References

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