Afghanistan - 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 Afghanistan was 18.80 as of 2020. Its highest value over the past 56 years was 27.60 in 2005, while its lowest value was 5.31 in 1981.

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
1964 9.19
1965 6.96
1967 6.93
1968 11.63
1969 12.16
1970 14.61
1971 10.32
1973 19.43
1974 14.87
1975 14.52
1976 11.10
1977 9.10
1978 11.99
1979 6.53
1980 7.17
1981 5.31
1982 11.61
1983 10.04
1984 10.91
1985 8.49
1986 8.05
1987 7.89
1988 13.05
1989 11.94
1990 14.53
1991 6.91
1992 14.30
1993 10.74
1994 12.85
1995 10.23
1996 6.59
1997 9.70
1998 15.00
1999 24.84
2000 16.75
2001 15.78
2002 23.97
2003 25.31
2004 26.91
2005 27.60
2006 27.34
2007 25.93
2008 19.43
2009 12.35
2010 13.75
2011 15.32
2012 16.08
2013 10.88
2014 18.62
2015 19.17
2016 19.36
2017 20.08
2018 19.55
2019 21.71
2020 18.80

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