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Confidentiality of merchandise trade statistics
CONFIDENTIALITY OF MERCHANDISE TRADE STATISTICS
The release of statistics for certain merchandise trade commodities is restricted in order to prevent the identification of the activities of an individual business, where it is requested by the business. These restrictions do not affect the total value of exports and imports for Australia, but they can affect statistics at disaggregated levels, including by state.
Prior to September 2008, import commodities with confidentiality restrictions 'No commodity details' or 'No value details' contributed to the relevant state and country totals, so that these totals showed the accurate level of trade. To ensure the confidentiality of data, this treatment changed in September 2008. Import commodities with these confidentiality restrictions are now excluded from all state-level data. Therefore, data on imports for Victoria may understate the actual amount of trade in Victoria, including the amount of trade with the state's major trading partners.
From December 2008, some additional commodities have had a restriction of 'No commodity details' applied, and care should be taken when interpreting the data on Machinery and transport equipment in the commodity table in the chapter.
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