Heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) - 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 Heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) was 19.42 as of 2020. Its highest value over the past 60 years was 25.24 in 2005, while its lowest value was 4.41 in 1961.

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 4.53
1961 4.41
1962 5.16
1963 6.69
1964 10.69
1965 11.06
1966 11.37
1967 11.00
1968 13.18
1969 12.74
1970 12.44
1971 11.62
1972 11.77
1973 12.22
1974 12.34
1975 11.71
1976 11.86
1977 11.36
1978 10.32
1979 10.25
1980 11.96
1981 12.92
1982 12.99
1983 13.15
1984 13.43
1985 13.78
1986 11.23
1987 12.12
1988 12.28
1989 14.97
1990 14.42
1991 12.88
1992 14.51
1993 16.07
1994 16.36
1995 17.04
1996 19.46
1997 20.63
1998 18.26
1999 20.23
2000 24.86
2001 22.67
2002 23.06
2003 23.67
2004 23.44
2005 25.24
2006 24.65
2007 23.57
2008 23.32
2009 21.41
2010 22.25
2011 23.90
2012 23.31
2013 23.10
2014 20.50
2015 17.91
2016 17.50
2017 18.82
2018 19.91
2019 18.91
2020 19.42

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