The Task
You are to prepare a Figure or Table that presents the changing geography of exports for raw and processed products for a major tropical export, such as: i) cocoa beans, where value-adding often occurs when chocolate is made; ii) coffee beans, where value-adding often occurs when coffee is made; iii) natural rubber, where value-adding often occurs when products like tyres or gloves are manufactured. Choose only one raw material and one linked processed product from the list above. You may choose to create a bar graph, column graph, pie chart, line graph etc. You are then required to write a short description (50-100 words) that highlights your key observations of the data.
Steps
Step 1: Open https://comtrade.un.org/data (Links to an external site.). Click “Get Data”.
First, in the ‘Type of Product & Frequency’ section, select ‘Goods’ and Frequency should be ‘Annual’.
Next, in the ‘Classification’ section, select ‘As reported’ in the ‘HS’ category.
Now select the data you want. Select the Year (it might be helpful to select 2020 and an historical year such as 1990 to be able to present change over time); Reports (All); Partners (World); Trade flows (export); and the HS Codes for the raw material and linked processed commodity you have chosen (see examples given above).
Click the green “Get Data” button to prepare the data you have selected.
Step 2: “Download CSV” allows you to download the data in an Excel sheet.
Step 3: The Excel sheet will include a lot of data that you don’t need for this exercise. It might be easier to remove the unnecessary columns. You will need major columns like Year, Reporter, Commodity Code, Commodity, Netweight, and Trade Value. You will also need to “Sort” the data, probably by “Commodity Code”, “Year” and then “Trade Value”. Select the columns you don’t need, and delete them.
Step 4: You can now ‘sort’ your data in various ways. You can start by sorting by Commodity Code (the HS code) so that you don’t mix up the commodity with the linked processed commodity. You might like to move (cut, paste) one set of commodity data onto a new worksheet, so as to keep everything clean. You can then sort by ‘Trade Flow’ to distinguish import from export of your chosen commodities. Then you can sort by ‘Trade Value’ (largest to smallest) to see which counties rank the highest.
Step 5: You should now be able to see the countries listed by the total value of each commodity exported. We are only interested in the top exporters for each commodity – let’s say the top 10 counties. Who are the major exporters of raw materials? What kinds of countries are these? Where are they located? Who are the major exporters of processed products? What is the difference in unit value of raw and processed commodities? Have any tropical countries managed to “upgrade” over time by becoming major exporters of higher value processed commodities?
Step 5: Present your findings in an appropriate graph/s that effectively communicates the geography, or changing geography, of raw and processed exports for your chosen commodity, accompanied by a short textual description (100 words) that describes your findings.
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