Corrections to the Overseas Trade in Goods Statistics
This section is News
Corrections to the Overseas Trade in Goods Statistics (OTS) that will be published in the May 2021 publication released on Friday 9 July.
Today we are announcing corrections to the Overseas Trade in Goods Statistics (OTS) that will be published in the May 2021 publication released on Friday 9 July.
Certain export Customs declarations, for goods under temporary admissions and being re-exported from customs warehouses, were erroneously included in the OTS. This affects UK export data covering January 2019 to February 2021.
The January 2020 to February 2021 data is currently provisional and open to revisions, so we will be applying these corrections within the dataset released in July. The corrections mainly affect UK exports to the USA, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia and South Korea of the following HS2 chapters:
- 97 - Works of art, collectors' pieces and antiques
- 71 - Natural or cultured pearls, precious or semi-precious stones, precious metals, metals clad with precious metal, and articles thereof; imitation jewellery; coin
- 61 - Articles of apparel and clothing accessories, knitted or crocheted
- 84 - Nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances; parts thereof
- 85 - Electrical machinery and equipment and parts thereof;
The correction revises the monthly non-EU trade figures downwards, by less than 3% in most months, with a maximum downward revision of approximately 6%.
The January to December 2019 trade data is currently closed for revisions, however we will be correcting the trade data during the next unscheduled correction exercise, expected later in the year. We will announce more details in due course.
The issue was found during quality assurance checks, and subsequently we have carried out a full audit of all Customs Procedure Codes (CPC) used within the OTS production system.