The 5th Regional Workshop on ASEAN International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) was held from 18 June to 20 June 2019 in Bali (Indonesia). The Regional Workshop was organised by ARISE Plus and the ASEAN Secretariat (ASEANstats) and attended by the delegates from ASEAN member states. The workshop discussed specific methodological issues in the implementation of IMTS2010 recommendations such as trade indices and other relevant IMTS data issues.
Overall Objective:
The main objective of the Regional Workshop on ASEAN IMTS is to further improve the IMTS data quality, focusing on issues related to cross-country exports and imports data comparability faced by ASEAN Member States (AMS), especially on the trade data asymmetries as indicated in the results of mirror analysis, on the seasonalities in the results of monthly time-series IMTS in of AMS, and on Trade Indices.
Specific Objectives:
- To discuss the methodology for constructing trade indices, and its operational calculation using AMS IMTS data, and to explore the possible use of trade indices in improving the IMTS quality data.
- To review the results of the IMTS mirror analysis, and to discuss the possible causes of asymmetries between trade data recorded by one reporting country’s exports and another partner country’s imports, i.e. by identifying conceptual and methodological differences in the types of data collection between both countries;
- And then from the review of IMTS mirror analysis, to recommend the necessary follow up actions for further improving the quality of IMTS data of AMS as regularly submitted to ASEANstats.
- To discuss the quality of AMS IMTS data by looking at the patterns of monthly time-series IMTS data in ASEAN Member States (AMS), i.e. identifying the monthly exports and imports data regularities.
