Costa Rica - Merchandise imports from low- and middle-income economies within region (% of total merchandise imports)

Merchandise imports from low- and middle-income economies within region (% of total merchandise imports) in Costa Rica was 18.56 as of 2020. Its highest value over the past 60 years was 26.39 in 1968, while its lowest value was 5.36 in 1962.

Definition: Merchandise imports from low- and middle-income economies within region are the sum of merchandise imports by the reporting economy from other low- and middle-income economies in the same World Bank region according to the World Bank classification of economies. Data are as a percentage of total merchandise imports 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 5.82
1961 5.83
1962 5.36
1963 5.61
1964 8.43
1965 12.02
1966 16.56
1967 21.13
1968 26.39
1969 23.89
1970 25.23
1971 24.89
1972 25.10
1973 23.67
1974 21.46
1975 22.29
1976 21.83
1977 21.17
1978 25.30
1979 21.34
1980 22.98
1981 24.62
1982 24.21
1983 23.92
1984 21.49
1985 17.69
1986 19.97
1987 19.79
1988 21.18
1989 19.74
1990 17.06
1991 20.14
1992 19.00
1993 18.10
1994 20.78
1995 20.72
1996 20.91
1997 16.90
1998 14.32
1999 14.23
2000 21.54
2001 14.64
2002 20.98
2003 16.18
2004 18.33
2005 17.21
2006 15.94
2007 17.20
2008 17.41
2009 18.11
2010 18.95
2011 18.19
2012 17.17
2013 17.50
2014 16.84
2015 18.06
2016 18.26
2017 18.47
2018 17.99
2019 18.17
2020 18.56

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: Imports