Comtrade

Comtrade is the United Nations' public database of country-level import and export statistics, reported by customs authorities under the Harmonized System.

Comtrade is the United Nations’ central repository of international trade statistics, built from the export and import records that national customs authorities report for goods classified under the HS code system. It covers virtually every traded product, commodities included, for most of the world’s countries.

Because exporting and importing countries sometimes report different figures for what should be the same shipment, due to timing, valuation, or misclassification, researchers often need to reconcile Comtrade data before using it for detailed analysis. The BACI database was built specifically to do this reconciliation, producing a single harmonized trade flow from the raw Comtrade records rather than leaving users to resolve mismatches themselves.