All figures come from UN Comtrade. Imports are read from the reporting market (reporter = the importing economy), flow = import, partner = World, at the HS6 level. China's export figures, which also appear in Comtrade, are a different observation and are not merged with another country's import figures.
A month with no published figure is shown as a gap and returns null in
every calculation. It is never treated as zero, and it shortens the number of months
a trend can cover. A 12-month total is only reported when all 12 months are present;
a year-over-year figure needs 24 consecutive months.
When markets are ranked against each other, the comparison ends at the most recent month for which every listed market has a complete 12-month window. A market that has a shorter history is labelled "no comparable data" rather than placed at the bottom of the ranking.
Unit value is the reported total value divided by the reported net weight. It is an average over everything in the item, so it reflects a changing product mix. It is not a price quote for any single product.
Any "world" total on this site is the sum of the reporting economies included in the release, not a guaranteed complete global figure. National totals can be revised, and estimates are flagged as estimates.
The charts and tables on this site are public. Premium analyses—supply-country share, seasonality, unit value coverage across markets, and exports—are only served through the API after an authorised session, and are never included in the published HTML, build output, or source maps.