El Salvador - 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 El Salvador was 38.22 as of 2020. Its highest value over the past 60 years was 40.10 in 1982, while its lowest value was 13.26 in 1960.

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 13.26
1961 15.22
1962 19.74
1963 20.07
1964 22.32
1965 23.32
1966 26.33
1967 26.48
1968 33.73
1969 31.34
1970 30.47
1971 28.31
1972 30.07
1973 29.13
1974 25.82
1975 26.74
1976 27.19
1977 25.62
1978 27.48
1979 29.45
1980 35.14
1981 37.10
1982 40.10
1983 36.63
1984 37.35
1985 33.92
1986 27.07
1987 29.07
1988 30.60
1989 27.97
1990 26.09
1991 28.30
1992 27.45
1993 25.14
1994 22.22
1995 26.42
1996 29.53
1997 33.49
1998 32.71
1999 35.01
2000 26.51
2001 27.89
2002 27.84
2003 27.75
2004 27.84
2005 32.89
2006 33.34
2007 35.81
2008 35.57
2009 36.72
2010 34.39
2011 33.72
2012 34.85
2013 30.29
2014 30.49
2015 31.31
2016 33.49
2017 33.93
2018 33.22
2019 35.93
2020 38.22

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