Low income - 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 Low income was 18.13 as of 2020. Its highest value over the past 60 years was 20.67 in 1984, while its lowest value was 6.66 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 8.10
1961 7.79
1962 6.66
1963 8.33
1964 8.96
1965 8.90
1966 9.53
1967 8.52
1968 10.67
1969 11.04
1970 11.88
1971 12.17
1972 10.74
1973 12.16
1974 12.11
1975 10.55
1976 8.56
1977 9.52
1978 11.56
1979 13.50
1980 15.12
1981 16.16
1982 18.92
1983 18.89
1984 20.67
1985 17.08
1986 13.14
1987 13.17
1988 12.12
1989 13.67
1990 11.12
1991 11.04
1992 12.26
1993 12.97
1994 12.79
1995 13.09
1996 15.16
1997 16.78
1998 13.75
1999 16.19
2000 14.25
2001 12.17
2002 14.20
2003 15.20
2004 16.61
2005 18.17
2006 16.52
2007 14.15
2008 13.46
2009 14.16
2010 13.67
2011 17.27
2012 17.47
2013 18.06
2014 18.58
2015 16.75
2016 16.86
2017 17.15
2018 17.40
2019 18.19
2020 18.13

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