External Trade of the Czech Republic
Methodology |
Contents |
The source of data on imports and exports are customs statistics collected by the Directorate General of Customs from data reported in Single Administrative Documents (SADs). 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.
Imports and exports data should be regarded as preliminary ones. A peculiarity of customs statistics is the fact that data published are monthly updated by those SADs 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. Published monthly data of the Czech Statistical Office are quartely 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 released in this publication 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.
Also published are statistics on price trends (unit values) in external trade for January - April 2004/ Unit value indices characterize relative changes in average unit values of merchandise in a current (reference) period over average unit values in preceding period.
On a monthly basis, the Czech Statistical Office publishes also sample indices of nominal import and export prices based on prices collected on selected commodities among selected businesses. The price trend is monitored using so-called representatives - items that keep the same quality in time, so that only changes in prices are measured. These indices are published in the edition Statistical Information - „Import and Export Price Indices in the Czech Republic“ (a Czech-English version), publ. code 7201-04. The price indices are used to produce deflators for calculating import and export indices at constant prices, where the indices are converted on the basis of import/export structure by commodity group in a given period. In march 2004 the deflator of imports (March 2003 = 100) amounted to 101,2 % and the deflator of exports to 103,1 %. Import and export indices at constant prices reached 119,1 % and 115,1 %, respectively, in the same period..
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.
/ Unit value indices characterize relative changes in average unit values of merchandise in a current (reference) period over average unit values in preceding period.
On a monthly basis, the Czech Statistical Office publishes also sample indices of nominal import and export prices based on prices collected on selected commodities among selected businesses. The price trend is monitored using so-called representatives - items that keep the same quality in time, so that only changes in prices are measured. These indices are published in the edition Statistical Information - „Import and Export Price Indices in the Czech Republic“ (a Czech-English version), publ. code 7201-04. The price indices are used to produce deflators for calculating import and export indices at constant prices, where the indices are converted on the basis of import/export structure by commodity group in a given period. In march 2004 the deflator of imports (March 2003 = 100) amounted to 101,2 % and the deflator of exports to 103,1 %. Import and export indices at constant prices reached 119,1 % and 115,1 %, respectively, in the same period.
