Foreign trade in goods

Summary

Data on Iceland‘s trade in goods is primarily acquired from Customs data. Statistics Iceland has requested increased frequency of data delivery from Iceland Revenue and Customs, allowing for more timely publication of trade in goods statistics.

Description

Normally, Statistics Iceland publishes data on trade in goods twice per month. In the beginning of the month, preliminary data for the previous month, after a brief review and correction of obvious errors, is published and again at the end of the month when data validation has been completed. Data on trade in goods is mostly based on Customs data, received monthly by Statistics Iceland. Experimental data will not impact the regular release calendar.

In order to accompany increased demand for economic statistics with the Covid-19 outbreak, Statistics Iceland has increased publication of trade in goods statistics from monthly to weekly periodicity. As a consequence, Statistics Iceland can publish more timely data. It’s important to underline that these results are published as experimental statistics and are subject to considerable uncertainty and revision as data is processed further.

Objectives

With more timely data, a better indication of change in trade in goods can be provided.