Current account balance forecast

To enable a better understanding of global trade patterns, the OECD developed transparent methodologies to reconcile asymmetries in international trade data. Two balanced trade datasets are available: the OECD Balanced International Merchandise Trade dataset (BIMTS) and the OECD-WTO Balanced Trade in Services dataset (BaTIS).

International trade statistics provide a view of trade flows between countries, broken down by types of goods and services. However, these conventional statistics do not offer insights into the actors who are engaged in cross-border trade. The Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (TEC) database addresses this gap by offering international trade in goods data broken down by different categories of enterprises. This dataset serves as a robust foundation for policy analyses that explore which types of firms are involved in international trade in goods and what are their characteristics. Export and import values, as well as and the number of exporting and importing enterprises, are available most OECD and a number of non-OECD countries.

The OECD International Transport and Insurance Costs of merchandise trade (ITIC) dataset provides information on the costs associated with transporting and insuring goods across borders. These costs are expressed as CIF/FOB margins, interpreted as the difference between the Cost, Insurance, and Freight (CIF) and the Free-On-Board (FOB) valuations for the same import flow. To build ITIC, all available official statistics on imports with both CIF and FOB prices are gathered, broken down by partner country and by commodity; later, a gravity model is estimated and used to predict the CIF/FOB margins for countries lacking explicit data, providing global coverage. The final dataset encompasses over 200 economies and partners and more than 1,200 products according to the Harmonized System (HS 2017).