UK trade quality and methods guide

UK trade shows the extent of import and export activity and is a main contributor to the measurement of overall economic growth of the UK.

The UK trade balance is an important economic figure and is calculated as total exports, less total imports. The trade balance reflects the overall net position of the UK, describing whether the UK exports more than it imports (a trade surplus) or whether it imports more than it exports (a trade deficit).

UK trade comprises imports and exports of both goods and services.

Trade in goods data shows the monthly movement in current prices and chained volume measures. Monthly trade in goods data are broken down to country and commodity level. Goods commodity data are primarily published according to the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) (PDF, 644KB) and are split into the following 9 categories:

• food and live animals

• beverages and tobacco

• crude materials

• fuels

• animal and vegetable oils and fats

• chemicals

• material manufactures

• machinery and transport equipment

• miscellaneous manufactures

• unspecified goods

Trade in goods data are also published quarterly according to the Classification of Product by Activity (CPA) (PDF 3.6MB) in current prices and chained volume measures.

Trade in services data shows the estimated monthly movement in current prices and chained volume measures. Trade in services data are broken down to service type level on a quarterly basis. Services account type data are published according to the Extended Balance of Payments Services Classification (EBOPS) (PDF, 70.8KB) and are split into the following 12 categories:

• manufacturing
• maintenance and repair
• transportation
• travel
• construction
• insurance and pension
• financial
• intellectual property
• telecommunications, computer and information services
• other business services
• personal, cultural and recreational
• government

Full trade in services data broken down to service type and country level are available quarterly in our UK trade in services: service type by partner country dataset.

For information about the statistical designation of these statistics, go to Section 5: Quality of the statistics.

We restructured and updated this guide on 16 January 2026. Important changes to quality and methods include:

• improvements to the recoding of precious metals to remove the double counting of some precious metals bars and include previously under-recorded non-monetary gold that is not in bar form

• improvements in our measurement of pharmaceutical trade by multi-national enterprises

For more information on latest, past and upcoming changes, go to Section 6: Changes and their effects on comparability over time.

We present statistics on UK trade in our monthly UK trade release. This release includes nine datasets:

• UK trade: goods and services publication tables – monthly data on the UK's trade in goods and services, including trade inside and outside the EU
• Trade in goods: country-by-commodity exports – monthly export country-by-commodity data on the UK's trade in goods, including trade by all countries and selected commodities, non-seasonally adjusted
• Trade in goods: country-by-commodity imports – monthly import country-by-commodity data on the UK's trade in goods, including trade by all countries and selected commodities, non-seasonally adjusted
• Trade in goods: all countries, seasonally adjusted – the annual, quarterly and monthly goods export and import figures for all countries with the UK
• UK trade: records sheet – selected monthly figures for total goods and services, total goods and EU and non-EU goods compared with previous highs and lows and record figures, UK
• UK trade: revisions – total trade balance – revisions triangle for monthly total trade balance data, UK
• UK trade: revisions – total trade exports – revisions triangle for monthly total trade exports data, UK
• UK trade: revisions – total trade imports – revisions triangle for monthly total trade imports data, UK
• Trade in goods: CPA (08) exports and imports – additional information for UK trade in goods by classification of product by activity

These statistics primarily consist of trade in goods and provide exports, imports and balance.

Trade in services statistics are published quarterly in five datasets:

• UK trade in services: service type by partner country, non-seasonally adjusted – quarterly estimates of service type by partner country, non-seasonally adjusted
• UK trade in services: all countries, non-seasonally adjusted – quarterly estimates of total trade in services by country, non-seasonally adjusted
• UK trade in services by account, chain volume measure (CVM) and current price (CP) – exports and imports of services by top-level product accounts on chain volume measure (CVM) and current price (CP), seasonally adjusted basis
• UK total trade: all countries, non-seasonally adjusted – quarterly estimates of total trade, trade in goods, and trade in services by country, non-seasonally adjusted
• UK total trade: all countries, seasonally adjusted – quarterly estimates of total trade, trade in goods, and trade in services by country, seasonally adjusted

These statistics primarily consist of trade in services and provide exports, imports and balance.

Time periods covered by these statistics

Data are available for:

• months from January 1997 onwards
• rolling 3-monthly periods from January to March 1997 onwards
• quarters from Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 1997 onwards
• rolling 12-monthly periods from January to December 1997 onwards
• calendar years from 1997 onwards

Where the data come from

Trade is measured through both exports and imports of goods and services. Data are supplied by over 30 sources including several administrative sources, with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) being the largest for trade in goods.

Trade in goods

Data from HMRC are the main data source for trade in goods making up over 90% of trade in goods value. The Intrastat survey collects data for the movement of goods between Northern Ireland and the EU. All other data are collected from customs declarations made according to the requirements of the Taxation (Cross Border Trade) Act 2018.

Additional data sources include the Bank of England (BoE) and other Office for National Statistics (ONS) data sources, including:

• International Trade in Services (ITIS) survey

• Household Final Consumption Expenditure (HHFCE)

• ONS-calculated estimates for globalisation

There is one commercial data source, VesselsValue Ltd, for the provision of UK shipping data.

Trade in services

Data from the International Trade in Services (ITIS) Survey make up over 50% of trade in services data. The UK trade release incorporates data collected from the ITIS survey, which is sent to around 2,400 businesses quarterly and around 28,000 businesses annually. 

Data from the International Passenger Survey (IPS) are the main source for travel services, making up around 20% of total imports. 

In addition to data from the ITIS Survey and the IPS, other data sources include (but are not limited to):

• Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured (FISIM)
• Financial Services Survey (FSS)
• data from the Bank of England (BoE)
• Government Services data
• revenue and expense generated from military services from Ministry of Defence (MoD)
• tuition fees and student numbers from Higher Education Statistics Agency

Additional data to estimate transport services include:

• data from the Civil Aviation Authority on flights
• data from airports on airport operators and airline revenues
• airlines fuel data from fuel companies
• international haulage and road freight statistics from the Department for Transport (DfT)
• energy prices, diesel prices and road fuel prices from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)
• shipping figures from the Chamber of Shipping (CoS)

How we produce the statistics

Trade in goods

ONS trade in goods statistics are derived mainly from data provided by HMRC on the physical movement of goods exported from and imported to the UK. However, ONS trade in goods statistics are published on a Balance of Payments (BoP) basis, while the data provided by HMRC are on an International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) basis. BoP trade statistics reflect goods that are traded on a change-of-ownership basis, while IMTS trade statistics reflect goods that are traded on a physical movement basis.

To conform to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) definition for Balance of Payments statistics, we have to make various adjustments to the data received from HMRC. These adjustments include certain transactions that are not reported to HMRC. Adjustments are also made to exclude certain transactions that are reported by HMRC but do not involve a change in economic ownership.

Estimates of the freight and insurance costs of transporting goods to the UK are deducted from the values of imports submitted by HMRC. This is because the value required for balance of payments is the value of goods at the point of export (at the customs border of the exporting country), and not the value of the goods as they arrive in the UK (as HMRC measures).

Data from the ITIS survey are used to estimate the value of goods sent abroad for processing (GSAPRO) and merchanting. GSAPRO represents data that are included in HMRC estimates but are then removed from ONS estimates. This is because the goods have not undergone an ownership change as part of their movement into and out of the country. Merchanting data represent the purchases and sales of goods that are purchased for the direct purpose of resale, and which remain outside of the UK. The largest product that is typically traded by merchanting is oil.

Globalisation adjustments were first introduced in 2023 as an additional source of merchanting data and other "missing" exports and imports that do not cross the UK border. These adjustments provide a better measurement of the activities of a number of multinational enterprises. More information can be found in our Globalisation in the context of the UK National Accounts article.

A complete breakdown of the contribution of adjustments to trade in goods on a balance of payments basis is provided in The Pink Book, Chapter 2 (dataset).

For more information on the differences between trade in goods statistics produced by the ONS and HMRC, please see Section 7: Comparability and coherence with other statistics producers.

Precious metals

Our headline trade statistics contain the UK's exports and imports of non-monetary gold, in line with international standards.

As a substantial amount of the world's trade in non-monetary gold takes place on the London markets, this trade can have a large impact on the size of the UK's headline trade figures and can account for a large proportion of the changes between periods. We present time series data for precious metals as well as total trade excluding precious metals for both EU and non-EU countries, to provide the underlying trends in trade in goods.

Precious metals include non-monetary gold, silver bullion, platinum bullion and palladium bullion. Non-monetary gold forms the majority of the commodity group "unspecified goods" and is the technical term for gold bullion not owned by central banks. Silver, platinum and palladium bullion form part of the "material manufactures" commodity group.

Data on non-monetary gold and other precious metals are obtained from the Bank of England (BoE), which provides a balanced figure (exports, less imports). We attribute the balanced data to either exports or imports, depending on whether the data are positive (that is, exports are greater than imports) or negative (that is, exports are less than imports), respectively. The BoE data are collected from their precious metals (PM) survey return, which captures the change in ownership of precious metals data. Once received from the BoE, the ONS smooths the precious metals data to ensure individual responses cannot be disclosed. The traders reporting precious metals data to BoE also report precious metals data to HMRC. While we exclude this HMRC data from our statistics to avoid double counting, we do use the country of trade values to allocate countries to the BoE precious metals data.

More information can be found in our National Accounts article: A brief explanation of non-monetary gold in national accounts.

Low value trade

Data on low value trade (imports and exports of an individual value of £873 or less) are collected from HMRC via customs declarations, however, these data are automatically aggregated and not classified by commodity type. More detail on HMRC's collection and treatment of low value trade can be found in section 8.3 of the Overseas trade in goods statistics methodology and quality report.

We use these data from HMRC and disaggregate the estimates of low value trade across commodities using the distribution of commodities reflected in HMRC's monthly overseas trade in goods statistics (OTS).

Channel Islands and Isle of Man

For Balance of Payments (BoP) purposes the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are not considered part of the UK economic territory. However, the Overseas Trade Statistics published by HMRC compiled on an International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) basis do include the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man as part of the UK's economic territory. Therefore, to align with BoP guidance, we need to add in our UK trade with the islands and exclude their trade with other countries.

HMRC provide these data to us, which they receive from each island's governing body, and which are consistent with the OTS. The data have been provided by HMRC from 2016 onwards and were back cast to 1997 using other OTS data and quality assured by HMRC.

Trade in services

The balance of payments statistics of trade in services are derived from a variety of sources; however, the International Trade in Services (ITIS) survey and the International Passenger Survey (IPS) form the bulk of these data.

Since September 2025, ITIS data are processed only once each quarterly period, and this is planned to continue until early 2027. During this period, the data will be based on a strong survey response rate of between approximately 60% and 70%. This will facilitate more focus on improving processing systems and ensuring methods and quality in the future. There is a quarterly ITIS survey, and an annual survey. Initial quarterly estimates are drawn from the quarterly survey (which has a smaller sample size) and then updated using data from the annual survey. As of January 2026, the latest annual ITIS survey data that has been incorporated into trade in services estimates is for 2023.

Imputation methods, which are applied to compensate for any businesses that do not respond, in the ITIS survey are calculated within service type at total world rather than country level.

As part of our Improving our travel and tourism statistics project, the IPS is being transformed, and travel services estimates have been forecast since Quarter 3 (July to Sept) 2024. These estimates will continue to be forecast during the period of the transformation.

Our Financial Services Survey (FSS) is undergoing transformation to improve the quality of our financial sector statistics. During the period of transformation, starting from Quarter 1 2024, financial services trade statistics are based on forecasts.

Seasonal adjustment

The data published in the UK trade release are seasonally adjusted. This aids interpretation by removing annually recurring fluctuations, for example, because of holidays or other regular seasonal patterns.

Trade in goods can have seasonal patterns for certain commodities. For instance, there is typically an increase of gas imports in winter months and an increase in imports of cars surrounding the launch of new number plate codes every March and September.

The parameter settings used for the process of seasonal adjustment are derived by our experts in time series methodology, using X13-ARIMA-SEATS, which is a seasonal adjustment software produced, distributed, and maintained by the United States Census Bureau.

Trade in services has 12 account levels, which are directly seasonally adjusted and processed using a similar method to the trade in goods seasonally adjusted series.

Deflation

Deflators are used to construct chained volume measures to provide a "real" measure, in that they have had the effect of inflation removed to measure the change in volume between consecutive periods.

Trade in goods is deflated at a Classification of product activity (CPA) level, with approximately 150 different product breakdowns used. Additionally, different deflators are frequently used for EU and non-EU trade of the same product. Deflators used include Producer Price Indices (PPIs), Export Price Indices (EPI) and Import Price Indices (IPI), and are detailed in the Producer Price Indices QMI. The deflators for a small number of products are calculated using the Unit Value Indices methodology with HMRC trade data.

The implied deflators (IDEFs) that are published in UK trade are calculated as a division of the current price measure by the chained volume measure for a particular series.

Statistical designation

The UK Statistics Authority suspended the National Statistics designation of UK trade (PDF, 72.9KB) on 14 November 2014. We have responded to all of the specific requirements of the Office for Statistics Regulation's (OSR) reassessment of UK trade. As part of our engagement with the OSR team, we are sharing our continuous improvement and development plans to support UK trade statistics regaining Accredited official statistics status. We welcome feedback on our new trade statistics, developments, and future plans by email to trade@ons.gov.uk.

How we quality assure the data and statistics

1. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) carries out extensive validation procedures as part of its data processing to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the trade in goods data. These procedures include both computational and manual validity checks as well as credibility checks on the data submitted. More detail on HMRC's quality assurance procedures can be found in section 5 of the Overseas trade in goods statistics methodology and quality report.

2. Once received by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), all data sources are validated for their expected content and formatting before they are included in our processing. Data are checked at multiple stages while being processed, and totals are broken down in accordance to contributions from each data source, to allow each input to be assessed.

3. We carry out thorough quality assurance of the processed data ahead of publication. Data trends and credibility are examined through regular meetings and "curiosity" sessions designed to thoroughly assess the data and consider trends in a wider economic context.

4. We quality assure datasets using a bespoke Python script to confirm the accuracy of all calculations, breakdowns and aggregates. Additionally, we conduct manual quality assurance of both the datasets and bulletin, with a minimum of two independent checks.

Strengths and limitations

Strengths

• The UK trade bulletin is published on the ONS website around one month after the end of the reference month.

• The quality of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) data (the main data source for trade in goods) is considered high in terms of timeliness, comprehensiveness and coverage.

• Trade figures produced by the ONS are highly comparable with those produced by other countries as international standards are used in the production of trade data; these include the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6), the System of National Accounts (SNA2008) and the European System of Accounts (ESA2010).

Limitations

• The UK trade release provides estimates of trade at a UK level, with no geographical breakdown; estimates of international trade in UK nations and regions are provided in our International trade in UK nations, regions and cities release.

• Trade in services data are processed quarterly, so monthly trade in services data are taken from quarterly trade in services data and are split across the months within that quarter through estimation; in months where we have a full quarter's data, we revise previous estimates of monthly values within that quarter.

• Estimates of trade in services can be subject to larger revisions than trade in goods figures because of a reliance on a range of survey data, compared with administrative data used for trade in goods; we carry out all revisions in line with the National Accounts Revisions Policy.

• Trade in services data by service type and country breakdown are not available in the monthly UK trade release. More detailed estimates of trade in services are published on a quarterly basis in our UK trade in services: services type by partner country release.

Trade asymmetries

These data are our best estimates of bilateral UK trade flows, compiled following internationally agreed standards and using a wide range of robust data sources. However, in some cases, alternative estimates of bilateral trade flows are available from the statistical agencies for the relevant countries or through central databases such as UN Comtrade. Differences between estimates are known as trade asymmetries and are a known aspect of international trade statistics, affecting bilateral estimates across the globe.

Asymmetries can be caused by a range of conceptual and measurement variations between the estimation practices of different countries. Statistical agencies are likely to have different source data, estimation methods, and methodological, geographical, and definitional differences. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) publishes more information on UK trade asymmetries. We have published analysis on trade in services asymmetries in our Asymmetries in trade data articles.

European Statistical System Quality Dimensions

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has developed Guidelines for measuring statistical quality based on the five European Statistical System (ESS) Quality Dimensions. These are:

• relevance
• accuracy and reliability
• timelessness and punctuality
• comparability and coherence
• accessibility and clarity

We have integrated these considerations into the guide.

All revisions and methodological changes are made in line with the published National Accounts Revisions Policy to ensure consistency across the national accounts system.

Every effort is made to ensure that the series are comparable over time, and annual time series are available back to at least 1998. Where possible, any changes to methodology are applied to the whole series to ensure comparability is maintained. However, the National Accounts Revisions Policy may mean that this is not always possible, or that a change is introduced over a shorter time period to minimise the discontinuity.

Latest changes

We restructured and updated this guide on 16 January 2026.

Improvements to the recording of precious metals

As part of our Methods improvements for Blue Book and Pink Book 2025, we have implemented improvements to the way we record trade in precious metals. We have removed the double counting of some precious metals bars and included previously under-recorded non-monetary gold that is not in bar form.

Precious metals include non-monetary gold, silver bullion, platinum bullion and palladium bullion. Non-monetary gold forms the majority of the commodity group "unspecified goods" and is the technical term for gold bullion not owned by central banks. Silver, platinum and palladium bullion form part of the "material manufactures" commodity group.

Improvements in our measurement of pharmaceutical trade by multi-national enterprises

As part of our ongoing improvements to our measurement of globalisation and multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the national accounts, we have implemented improvements to the way we estimate the pharmaceutical industry. A detailed overview of the background is provided in our Blue Book 2025: Globalisation article.

These methodological improvements have been applied to the full timeseries back to January 1997, with the largest impact on trade estimates from 2013 onwards (Figure 1).

Past changes

Brexit structural break

Since the UK left the EU on 31 January 2020, the arrangements for how the UK trades with the EU changed.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) implemented some data collection changes following Brexit, which affected statistics on UK trade in goods with the EU. The collection of data for the movement of physical goods between Great Britain and the EU changed from the Intrastat survey to customs declarations data from 2021 for exports and from 2022 for imports.

We have made adjustments to our estimates of goods imports from the EU in 2021 and 2022 to account for these changes, however, a structural break remains in the full time series for goods imports from and exports to the EU from January 2021.

We therefore advise caution when interpreting and drawing conclusions from these statistics. Our Impact of trade in goods data collection changes on UK trade statistics: summary of adjustments and the structural break from 2021 article provides more detail.

Upcoming changes

Allocation of precious metals

We are continuing to review our methodology for the allocation of precious metals, to ensure that we capture all trade of non-ferrous metals where these commodities are traded as a financial asset.

HM Revenue and Customs

UK trade in goods statistics are published monthly by us at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). HMRC publish Overseas trade in goods statistics (OTS) on the same day as we release the UK trade data each month.

UK trade figures produced by the ONS are on a Balance of Payments (BoP) basis, while the Overseas trade statistics (OTS) figures produced by HMRC are compiled on the International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) basis. This means there are numerous different methodologies that contribute to the compilation of each set of statistics.

The primary difference is that OTS is compiled based on goods physically entering or leaving the UK, while the ONS UK trade statistics are on a change-of-ownership basis. This leads to each account treating certain types of goods differently. Precious metals, which includes non-monetary gold (NMG), involves many international transactions that do not lead to the goods physically moving. Other goods affected include specific movements such as ships, boats and aircraft.

HMRC's Overseas trade in goods statistics are not comparable with ours because of the following differences.

ONS

• seasonally adjusted

• excludes precious metals

• Balance of Payments (BoP) basis – goods are traded on a change of ownership

• Channel Islands and Isle of Man are not considered part of the UK economic territory

• data on low value trade are disaggregated and distributed across commodities

HMRC

• not seasonally adjusted

• includes precious metals

• International Merchandise Trade Statistics basis – goods are traded on a physical location

• Channel Islands and Isle of Man are considered part of the UK economic territory

• data on low value trade are aggregated and not classified by commodity type

Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

Our UK trade figures are produced using country of dispatch, which records imports as coming from the country dispatching the shipments. However, trade figures can also be produced using country of origin, as is used by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

Data included in DESNZ's Energy trends publication are not comparable with ours because of the following differences:

• ONS – country-of-dispatch basis

• DESNZ – country-of-origin basis

ONS UK trade statistics are widely used by the UK Government, policy makers, businesses and organisations involved in international trade, researchers, the media, and the general public.

UK government departments primarily use the data to inform decisions on fiscal and monetary policy and the monthly trade statistics are essential for their briefing and forecasting purposes. The main governmental users of the UK trade data are:

• Bank of England (BoE)

• HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC)

• HM Treasury (HMT)

• Department for Business and Trade (DBT)

• Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ)

• Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)

The Department for Business and Trade uses ONS trade in goods statistics in their UK trade in numbers release and in their Trade and investments factsheets.

UK trade statistics are also used to answer press queries, parliamentary questions, and Freedom of Information requests.

Chained volume measures

Chained volume measures (CVMs) are a "real" measure in that they have had the effect of inflation removed to measure the change in volume between consecutive periods, fixing the prices of goods and services in one period (known as the base year, which is 2023 for trade).

Current price measures

Current price estimates (CPs) measure the actual price paid for goods or services and are not adjusted for inflation. Unless otherwise stated, all current price data are provided in £ million and are seasonally adjusted.

Inflation

Inflation is the change in the average price level of goods and services over a period of time.

Implied deflators

An implied deflator (IDEF) shows the implied change in average prices for the respective components of the trade balance, for example, the IDEF for imports will show the average price movement for imports.

Precious metals and non-monetary gold

Precious metals include non-monetary gold, silver bullion, platinum bullion and palladium bullion. Non-monetary gold forms the majority of the commodity group "unspecified goods" and is the technical term for gold bullion not owned by central banks. Silver, platinum and palladium bullion form part of the "material manufactures" commodity group.

Trade balance

The trade balance is the difference between exports and imports or exports minus imports. When the value of exports is greater than the value of imports, the trade balance is in surplus. When the value of imports is greater than the value of exports, the trade balance is in deficit. The balance is sometimes referred to as "net exports".

A full Glossary of economic terms is available.