Clarifying Trade Costs in Maritime Transport Jane Korinek OECD Trade and Agriculture Working Party on International Trade in Goods and Trade in Services Statistics 4-6 October 2010

OECD Trade & Agriculture 2 Maritime transport costs : data collection Values and volumes at HS-6 level Transport costs: Ad valorem and $/T Comprehensive customs data for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, United States and Uruguay Partial, estimated data for 32 additional countries including China, EU, Japan, Mexico, Russia Permits calculation of –transport cost per tonne of merchandise –ad valorem equivalent

OECD Trade & Agriculture 3 Customs data: complete Where available, we use aggregate transport costs at HS-6 level in conjunction with trade values and volumes Data issue: combining value and volume data Classification issue: different classifications (HS- 88 ; HS-96 ; HS-02) have been converted

OECD Trade & Agriculture 4 Non-comprehensive data for remaining countries Transport of grains in bulk: $/T. Source: Int’l Grains Council Baltic Dry Index for industrial raw materials transported in bulk Price per container used to estimate some data using a methodology of relative prices (sources: UNCTAD/Containerisation Intl or Drewery)

OECD Trade & Agriculture 5 Data issues As with all data sets there are issues, some outstanding and some resolved Estimated data: aggregate to disagreggated ; BDI is transport costs per shipload of material Combining value and volume data Cut-off point : we removed 2% of the data points Classification conversion

OECD Trade & Agriculture 6 Evolution of maritime transport costs in developing and OECD countries

OECD Trade & Agriculture 7 From analytical work on determinants of Transport Costs: Trade Imbalance

OECD Trade & Agriculture 8 Impact of MTC on trade in agriculture A doubling of transport costs ($/T) is associated with a % decline in agricultural trade overall Distance is still significant The impact of transport costs on trade is increasing over time – by 1.5 percentage points per year

OECD Trade & Agriculture 9Dissemination

10 OECD Trade and Agriculture