Afghanistan - Merchandise exports to low- and middle-income economies within region (% of total merchandise exports)

Merchandise exports to low- and middle-income economies within region (% of total merchandise exports) in Afghanistan was 79.50 as of 2020. Its highest value over the past 60 years was 88.66 in 2012, while its lowest value was 1.70 in 1993.

Definition: Merchandise exports to low- and middle-income economies within region are the sum of merchandise exports from the reporting economy to other low- and middle-income economies in the same World Bank region as a percentage of total merchandise exports by the economy. Data are computed only if at least half of the economies in the partner country group had non-missing data. No figures are shown for high-income economies, because they are a separate category in the World Bank classification of economies.

Source: World Bank staff estimates based data from International Monetary Fund's Direction of Trade database.

See also:

Year Value
1960 23.25
1961 12.36
1962 13.58
1963 18.54
1964 25.43
1965 20.86
1966 20.39
1967 24.57
1968 29.93
1969 26.07
1970 23.00
1971 9.97
1972 28.74
1973 31.38
1974 27.51
1975 24.87
1976 19.95
1977 19.29
1978 29.21
1979 21.83
1980 15.94
1981 16.37
1982 33.00
1983 17.40
1984 19.99
1985 17.05
1986 46.33
1987 35.41
1988 16.10
1989 10.10
1990 14.20
1991 7.90
1992 6.26
1993 1.70
1994 11.56
1995 13.06
1996 23.57
1997 24.03
1998 31.55
1999 46.59
2000 68.38
2001 57.05
2002 57.64
2003 78.30
2004 71.60
2005 76.75
2006 74.56
2007 76.25
2008 73.38
2009 66.22
2010 55.78
2011 66.81
2012 88.66
2013 80.57
2014 84.00
2015 72.81
2016 82.71
2017 83.05
2018 84.29
2019 82.02
2020 79.50

Development Relevance: The relative importance of intraregional trade is higher for both landlocked countries and small countries with close trade links to the largest regional economy. For most low- and middle-income economies - especially smaller ones - there is a "geographic bias" favoring intraregional trade. Despite the broad trend toward globalization and the reduction of trade barriers, the relative share of intraregional trade increased for most economies between 1999 and 2010. This is due partly to trade-related advantages, such as proximity, lower transport costs, increased knowledge from repeated interaction, and cultural and historical affinity. The direction of trade is also influenced by preferential trade agreements that a country has made with other economies. Though formal agreements on trade liberalization do not automatically increase trade, they nevertheless affect the direction of trade between the participating economies.

Limitations and Exceptions: Data on exports and imports are from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Direction of Trade database and should be broadly consistent with data from other sources, such as the United Nations Statistics Division's Commodity Trade (Comtrade) database. All high-income economies and major low- and middle-income economies report trade data to the IMF on a timely basis, covering about 85 percent of trade for recent years. Trade data for less timely reporters and for countries that do not report are estimated using reports of trading partner countries. Therefore, data on trade between developing and high-income economies should be generally complete. But trade flows between many low- and middle-income economies - particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa - are not well recorded, and the value of trade among low- and middle-income economies may be understated.

Aggregation method: Weighted average

Periodicity: Annual

Classification

Topic: Private Sector & Trade Indicators

Sub-Topic: Exports