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STANDARD INTERNATIONAL TRADE CLASSIFICATION (SITC)

5.42 Most countries use the SITC, in addition to the HS, for the dissemination and analysis of international merchandise trade statistics according to user requirements. While the HS classification groups commodities by the material of which the goods are composed, the SITC groups goods according to their level of manufacturing or processing. The ABS uses the HS based classifications for the compilation and dissemination of detailed commodity information, however the SITC is the primary classification used for the publication and dissemination of broad level commodity information in Australia's international merchandise trade statistics.

5.43 The third revision, SITC Rev. 3, was developed to better align the SITC with the HS. It was implemented by the ABS at the same time as the HS based classifications on 1 January 1988.

5.44 The fourth revision, SITC Rev. 4, was released internationally on 1 January 2007, along with the updated edition of the HS. This was necessary because of the large number of significant changes to the HS since January 1988. SITC Rev. 4 retains the overall structure of SITC Rev. 3 and consists of the same number of 1 digit sections and 2 digit divisions and has one additional 3 digit group level code. Changes at the 5 digit basic heading levels resulted in the deletion of 247 SITC Rev. 3 basic headings and the addition of 84 new basic headings. As a result of the changes strict period to period comparability was lost for a number of series.

5.45 The ABS implemented SITC Rev. 4 with the release of the July 2008 reference month. Two information papers: Changes to International Trade Statistics July 2008, 2007 to 2008 (cat. no. 5368.0.55.009) and Impact of Introducing Revision 4 of the Standard International Trade Classification, 2008 (cat. no. 5368.0.55.010) were released prior to the changes in the classification. These information papers detailed how the changes would occur, the impact on the data, correspondences from old to new SITC codes and correspondences to the AHECC and Customs Tariff codes. To assist users in the interpretation of the data after the changes to the classification, export and import statistics were compiled on both the SITC Rev. 3 and the SITC Rev. 4 basis for financial years 2005-06 and 2006-07 and published in Information Paper: Impact of Introducing Revision 4 of the Standard International Trade Classification, 2008 (cat. no. 5368.0.55.010).

5.46 Users of time series data should be aware that Australia's international merchandise trade statistics are presented on a SITC Rev. 4 basis from July 2005; prior to this the series are on a SITC Rev. 3 basis. Statistics are available at the 5 digit (the most detailed level), 3 digit, 2 digit and 1 digit levels. It is possible to link data (with the exception of refined petroleum products) at the 5 digit SITC level to the 6 digit level of the HS classification. Refined petroleum products can only be linked from the 5 digit SITC to codes at the most detailed HS levels, i.e. 8 digit AHECC and 10 digit HTISC. The international HS to SITC correspondences are not always released with updates to HS. The ABS does not always predict the correct correspondences, meaning sometimes changes to concordances are needed at a later date.

5.47 The majority of countries and international organisations continue to use SITC for a variety of purposes, such as the study of long term trends in international merchandise trade and the aggregation of traded commodities into classes for economic analysis.

5.48 An example of the hierarchical structure of the SITC Rev. 4 is included in Table 5.5 below.