In March, NSI launched a project ‘Quality Improvement of Intra-EU Trade Data in the Context of the Microdata Exchange’.
The international trade in goods statistics plays an important role for the analysis of the economic development and the policy making at national and Community level. The GDP formation and the Balance of payments of the countries are influenced in great extend by the international trade activity result.
At their 29th meeting in May 2016, the ESSC ‘supported the general approach to modernising the intra-EU trade in goods statistics aimed at ensuring a substantial reduction of the response burden, while at the same time maintaining a sound level of quality and responding to changing user needs’. Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European Business Statistics enters into force on January 1, 2022 for international trade in goods statistics. Its key aims are to reduce the cost and administrative burden of collecting and producing statistics while at the same time improving the quality of the statistical information. It establishes the microdata exchange (MDE) for intra-Union exports of goods, and strongly encourages innovative methodologies for the intra-Union trade in goods statistics.
The exchange of micro-data for the export of goods within the EU is the most innovative part of the modernized system for statistics on international trade in goods (ITGS). It should be used as an additional source of data to improve the quality of statistics on imports of goods within the EU.
The overall objective of the project is to integrate microdata exchanged in the process of compiling imports within the EU, improve the quality of data collected at national level and study asymmetry and its causes in the context of microdata exchange.
The project lasts 15 months - from March 2022 to May 2023.
