COUNTRY GROUPS

6.56 The ABS disseminates international merchandise trade statistics by country groups. A country group can be described as 'a conventional, internationally recognised association or organisation of member countries or economies which serves economic and political purposes'.

6.57 Country groups used in the dissemination of international merchandise trade statistics are:

• Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) (footnote 4)
• Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (footnote 4)
• European Union (EU)
• Euro area (countries that use Euro as their currency)
• Developing Countries (DCs)
• Least Developed Countries (LDCs).

6.58 The DCs and LDCs groups are as defined in Schedule 1 of the Customs Tariff. The lists of countries in these groups are identified by the UN and are maintained in Australia by the DIBP. The lists of DCs and LDCs groups can be accessed at the DIBP website. Member countries for the other country groups are identified on each group's website.

6.59 Country groups and their membership are provided in Appendix 9 in the 'Downloads' tab. Country groups may not be mutually exclusive, e.g. Indonesia is included in the APEC, ASEAN and DCs groups.

6.60 In international merchandise trade statistics, country groups reflect the country composition on the last day of the reference period of that publication.

6.61 Country group statistics reflect the composition of those groups at the time outputs are provided, irrespective of individual countries' dates of entry to the group. For example, Bulgaria and Romania were admitted to the EU in January 2007. Statistics produced from January 2007 onwards include these countries in all historical data for the EU. It should be noted that this is different to the treatment of changes in membership utilised in the balance of payments financial account and international investment position statistics where country group statistics reflect the composition of the country group at a point in time (e.g. in the above example statistics for Bulgaria and Romania would be included in statistics from January 2007, but not in earlier time periods).


FOOTNOTE:
4 The ABS includes Australia (i.e. Australian re-imports) in APEC and the OECD. <back