International Monetary Fund

Data cited at: Direction of Trade Statistics, The International Monetary Fund. The Direction of Trade Statistics (DOTS) presents current figures on the value of merchandise exports and imports dis-aggregated according to a country's primary trading partners. Area and world aggregates are included in the display of trade flows between major areas of the world. Reported data is supplemented by estimates whenever such data is not available or current. Imports are reported on a cost, insurance and freight (CIF) basis and exports are reported on a free on board (FOB) basis, with the exception of a few countries for which imports are also available FOB. Time series data includes estimates derived from reports of partner countries for non-reporting and slow-reporting countries.

Covering 187 countries including most low-income countries, the toolkit provides indicators on export product diversification and export product quality from 1962-2014. The measures in this toolkit are based on an updated version of the UN–NBER dataset, which harmonizes COMTRADE bilateral trade flow data at the 4-digit SITC (Rev. 1) level. The export diversification and quality database was developed by IMF staff under an IMF-DFID research collaboration. The Export Diversification Database has three main indicators: the Export Diversification Index, the Extensive Margin, and the Intensive Margin. Higher values ​​for the all three indices indicate lower diversification. The Export Quality Database contains export quality measures across different aggregation levels of export products. Higher values ​​for the quality indices indicate higher quality levels.

Global growth is projected at 3.1 percent in 2024 and 3.2 percent in 2025, with the 2024 forecast 0.2 percentage point higher than that in the October 2023 World Economic Outlook (WEO) on account of greater-than-expected resilience in the United States and several large emerging market and developing economies, as well as fiscal support in China. The forecast for 2024–25 is, however, below the historical (2000–19) average of 3.8 percent, with elevated central bank policy rates to fight inflation, a withdrawal of fiscal support amid high debt weighing on economic activity, and low underlying productivity growth. Inflation is falling faster than expected in most regions, in the midst of unwinding supply-side issues and restrictive monetary policy. Global headline inflation is expected to fall to 5.8 percent in 2024 and to 4.4 percent in 2025, with the 2025 forecast revised down.