How to read foreign trade figures

Foreign trade figures such as the number of shipments, value, weight, price per kilogram and the shares of partner countries are totals of many shipments. To read them correctly, ask five questions about every number: what exactly is counted, in which unit, which country is meant, over what period, and whether the data covers the whole trade. Most wrong conclusions come from skipping one of these questions, not from wrong data.

On Orion Markets these figures appear in market reports, company profiles, supplier and buyer lists and in Find new export markets. Below is what each kind of figure means, where it can mislead you and how to check it.

Number of shipments

The number of shipments shows how active a market or a company is. It is useful for comparing periods, companies and countries, but it is not the number of trucks or containers.

• One delivery can count several times. In shipment data, a consignment with several different products is usually counted once for each product. A company that brings in mixed consignments of twenty items shows many more shipments than one that brings in a single product, even if both receive one container a month.
• Judge regularity by months, not by the count. To see how often a company really buys, look at how many months of the period it had shipments and whether there are long gaps.
• Compare like with like. Shipment counts are best compared for the same product code, the same country and periods of the same length.

Value and weight

• Value is usually the value recorded at the border, converted to US dollars. It can differ from the contract price and moves with exchange rates.
• Weight is shown as net weight, the weight of the goods without packaging.
• Look at both. A market can grow in dollars and shrink in tonnes when prices rise. If value grows and weight does not, the market has become more expensive, not larger.

Price per kilogram

A price per kilogram in a report is the total value divided by the total net weight. It is a useful benchmark, with four limits:

• Net and gross weight. If you compare it with your own price per kilogram including packaging, your price will look lower than it is.
• Goods sold by the piece. For machines, phones or shoes, weight says little. Where a report shows additional units of measure, such as pieces or pairs, use them.
• Several grades under one code. One code can hold a cheap and an expensive version of the product. A wide spread between the minimum and maximum price usually means mixed grades, not a pricing error.
• Averages can be pulled by a few extreme values. Look at the spread and at prices by month, not at one average figure.

How to compare these prices with your own export price is covered in How to calculate a competitive export price.

Partner countries and countries of origin

Reports show two different lists of countries, and they answer different questions:

• Partner countries: where the companies on the other side of the trade are registered. For imports, these are the countries of the sellers.
• Countries of origin: where the goods were made. On Orion Markets reports, this is a separate block.

Goods made in China can be sold by a company registered in Singapore. They then count under China as the country of origin and under Singapore as the partner country. That is also why a country's own name can appear among its partners: part of its imports is bought from local companies that import and resell the goods.

Trading hubs add to this. Singapore, Hong Kong, the UAE and Panama handle large volumes of goods made elsewhere. A large share for a hub usually tells you about trade routes, not about production.

Companies in lists and profiles

• Re-exporters. Some importers bring goods in only to send them on. Their purchases are not their country's consumption.
• Agents and logistics companies. A company that "imports" dozens of unrelated products from many countries is often a customs agent or a logistics company working for the real owners of the goods. Check its profile before you treat it as a buyer.
• Name variations. Foreign company names are spelled in many ways, sometimes in different alphabets. Orion Markets merges the spellings of one company, and the profile lists them under Name variations.
• Concentration. If one company holds half of a market, the market open to you is much smaller than the total. Reports show the shares of the largest companies and the HHI index, which runs from 0 to 10,000: the higher it is, the more a few companies control the market.

Periods, seasons and short history

• Partial years. If the latest year has only some months, compare them with the same months of the previous year, as Orion Markets reports do, not with the full year.
• Seasons. Many products have peak months. Reports show a heat map of shipments by month and year and name the peak and low months. A rise between two months may be just the season.
• Different latest months. Each country's data ends at its own month. Check the period before comparing countries; the current periods are on the data coverage page.
• Short history. One or two months of data are enough to see who is active, but not to judge a trend. In Find new export markets, a country with less than six months of data gets the tag Short data history and is not rated above Tough market until more data comes in.
• One-off deals. A single large project, such as equipment for one plant, can double a year's imports. Check whether growth is spread across many companies.

Mirror data and changes in coverage

Some figures do not come from the country itself but from its partners: what other countries report as their exports to it. Such mirror data never matches the country's own figures exactly, because of different valuation, timing and transit through third countries.

Coverage can also change over time, and then the numbers change with it. Since July 2025, Orion Markets data for Russia covers only trade with Kazakhstan. Reports for Russia show a notice about it, because a comparison with earlier periods shows the change in coverage, not the real movement of the market. Before you call a sudden fall a market trend, check that the data still covers the same trade.

Example: reading a market report

The free sample report pipe valves and fittings, imports into Pakistan (codes 848110, 848180 and 848190) shows 15,595 shipments in January to September 2026, with more than 1,700 importers and 3,300 exporters. The main partner countries by value are China (49.2%), the United Arab Emirates (12.5%), the United States (9.1%), Singapore (6.4%) and Germany (5%).

Read with the questions above:

• Period. Our data for Pakistan starts in January 2026, so the report has no comparison with the previous year. Nine months of one year show who is active, but not a trend or a season.
• Partner countries. The UAE and Singapore are trading hubs. In this data the UAE has 12.5% of the value as a partner country, but only about 2% as a country of origin: most of the valves sold by companies in the UAE were made elsewhere. Where the goods were made is shown in the countries of origin block.
• Codes. The report combines three codes: pressure-reducing valves (848110), other valves and taps (848180) and parts (848190). If you sell only one of them, your market is smaller than the total.

Checklist before you draw a conclusion

1. Is the code narrow enough for your product, or does it mix several?
2. Are you comparing the same unit: value, net weight or pieces?
3. Is the country in question the partner country or the country of origin?
4. Are the periods equal and complete, and could the change be the season?
5. Did the data coverage change between the periods?
6. Is a big number spread across many companies, or is it one company or one deal?

To practise on real figures, open a free sample report in Ready-made research or build your own in Analyze markets by product. How to turn these figures into a market estimate is covered in How to estimate the market size for a product in a country.