Internationale handel en doorvoer: een nieuwe statistiek

From way back, the Netherlands is a trading nation. International trade and transport are important sources of income. However, the international transport flows also lead to costs for society. Therefore, careful assessments are needed when investing in infrastructure, transport and logistics. To make such assessments, the availability of quantitative information on international trade and transport flows is essential.
The information on international commodity flows is distributed among several statistical products by Statistics Netherlands (CBS): the statistics of international trade in goods and the six transport statistics. Even together these statistics cannot complete the picture of international commodity flows of the Netherlands. Transit is not visible in the statistics. Furthermore, a complete view of the value and weight of commodity flows broken down by content, origin, destination and transport mode is lacking.
Now, a new statistics integrates the statistics of international trade and transport by using a Bayesian integration model. The model takes care that the trade and transport figures are mutually consistent and satisfy logical restrictions. This results in a better view of the international commodity flows to, from and through the Netherlands broken down by commodity type and continent of origin or destination. For the first time since 1997, a reliable estimate of transit is available again. Furthermore, the margins around the estimates are determined, which gives insight in the reliability of the figures.