CLASSIFICATIONS USED BY THE ABS TO COMPILE AND DISSEMINATE INTERNATIONAL MERCHANDISE TRADE STATISTICS

5.9 The ABS uses the following classifications to present its international merchandise trade data:

• Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) is a 6 digit classification. The HS is used as the basis for the 8 digit AHECC and the 10 digit Customs Tariff
• Standard International Trade Classification, Revision 4 (SITC Rev. 4)
• Classification by Broad Economic Categories (BEC)
• Balance of Payments Broad Economic Categories (BoPBEC) (for imports and import clearances only)
• Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification, 2006 (ANZSIC 2006)
• Supply Use Product Code (SUPC) and Input Output Product Code (IOPC).

5.10 SITC Rev. 3 and ANZSIC 93 are used to disseminate historical international merchandise trade data (prior to July 2005 and July 2009 respectively). Upon request, export and import data for periods prior to January 2012 can be supplied by the Australian Transport Freight Commodity Classification (ATFCC). A correspondence from the AHECC and Customs Tariff codes to the ATFCC has not been maintained since January 2012.

5.11 The SUPC is used in the compilation of the annual supply use benchmarks which are used internally by the ABS to balance the three measures of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). International merchandise trade data by SUPC are not available for release. The IOPC is used in the compilation and release of the annual ABS publication Australian National Accounts: Input-Output Tables (Product Details) (cat. no. 5215.0.55.001).

5.12 ABS international merchandise trade data are also disseminated by DFAT using the Trade Import and Export Classification (TRIEC).

5.13 The relationship between the different classifications is depicted in Diagram 5.1.




5.14 Table 5.2 shows the number of statistical items at each level of the major classifications used for international merchandise trade statistics. The AHECC and Customs Tariff use the HS to the 6 digit level except for:

• AHECC Chapter 98 - Special Transactions and Commodities Not Classified According to Kind
• AHECC Chapter 99 - Commodities and Transactions Not Included in Merchandise Trade
• Customs Tariff Chapter 99 - Special Transactions and Commodities Not Classified According to Kind, and Commodities and Transactions Not Included in Merchandise Trade
• One AHECC code in Chapter 26 and one Customs Tariff code in Chapter 29 used by the ABS for confidentiality purposes (see Table 9.1 in Data Confidentiality).

Classification	Level	Number of merchandise codes
AHECC	2 digit	98
	4 digit	1 229
	6 digit	5 209
	8 digit	5 722
Customs Tariff	2 digit	97
	4 digit	1 226
	6 digit	5 211
	10 digit	7 688
SITC Rev. 4	1 digit	10
	2 digit	70
	3 digit	267
	5 digit	2 975
ANZSIC 2006(a)	1 digit	6
	2 digit	27
	3 digit	75
	4 digit	192
BoPBEC	1 character	3
	2 character	26
	4 character	107
BEC	1 digit	8
	2 digit	16
	3 digit	20
SUPC	4 digit	301
IOPC	8 digit	1 284
TRIEC	1 digit	3
	2 digit	5
	3 digit	19
	4 digit	63
(a) The ANZSIC counts only include codes that have correspondences to the AHECC or Customs Tariff. There are many ANZSIC codes which are not relevant to the goods imported to, or exported from, Australia.