by Drazen Lucanin (drazen.lucanin at gmail.com)
UN Comtrade is the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database. It collects statistics about trade of commodities around the world. It covers >97% of the World Trade.
Joint UN/OECD Data Collection and Processing System (COPRA) to maintain quality.
Information on (re-)import, (re-)export of commodities according to the SITC (around 100 commodity categories) for over 170 reporter countries from year 1962 to present.
Download limit: 50000 data per query.
Queries can be built such as shown on the express selection site. This yields the following table:
The data can be exported as:
Comtrade offers a RESTful web service API.
Response formats:
To access the data, an API authorization code is required which can only be obtained by getting a premium license.
UN Comtrade Web Services is only offered as part of the Premium Site License
There used to be a registration page to get the code, but is now missing. You can check your rights and contact the organisation here
More about the API can be found on the general data exchange knowledgebase site or the concrete details at the web service knowledgebase site.
This license gives the user:
Annual fee to get the multiple users premium site license is US $6,065.00. A 25% discount is given to not-for-profit organisations, such as academic institutions. Developing countries get this for free, but non of the FOC-II partners fit into this category.
More information can be found on the UN Publication - Comtrade site.
Data from the UN COMTRADE database are copyrighted by the United Nations.
UN COMTRADE data are provided for internal use only and may not be re-disseminated in any form without the written permission of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD).
Seems to be the most promising database to access "network" data (data between pairs of countries).