Pre-announcement of corrections to the Overseas Trade in Goods Statistics

News

Today we are announcing corrections to the Overseas Trade in Goods Statistics (OTS) that will be published in the September 2021 publication released on Thursday 11 November 2021.

Published 13 October 2021
Last updated 13 October 2021

Following routine quality assurance and checking procedures, we will be correcting the following Non-EU and EU trade figures:

Non-EU

• 3 commodity codes for 2015 – 3 codes for non-EU import
• 4 commodity codes for 2016 – 4 codes for non-EU imports
• 3 commodity codes for 2017 – 3 codes for non-EU imports
• 3 commodity codes for 2018 – 3 codes for non-EU imports
• 1927 commodity codes for 2019 – 2 codes for non-EU imports, 1925 codes for non-EU exports

EU

• 2 commodity code for 2015 – 2 code for EU imports
• 2 commodity codes for 2016 – 2 code for EU imports
• 3 commodity codes for 2017 – 3 codes for EU imports
• 8 commodity codes for 2018 – 8 codes for EU imports
• 3 commodity codes for 2019 – 3 codes for EU imports

The corrections with the largest impacts are the 2019 non-EU exports whereby 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 March 2019 to December 2019.The corrections mainly affect UK exports to the USA, Switzerland, and Hong Kong 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
• 84 - Nuclear reactors, boilers, machinery and mechanical appliances; parts thereof

The correction revises the monthly non-EU trade figures downwards, by less than 5% in most months, with a maximum downward revision of approximately 7%.

Scale of the revisions: the revisions to 2019 reduce the total non-EU export trade by less than 4% and a minimal increase EU import trade. All other amendments are negligible at total trade level.