Statistics specification: International trade in goods by Finnish regions

The regional international trade statistics are based on data on the value of imports and exports provided by companies engaged in international trade. The statistics include not only manufacturing, but also other economic activities, such as wholesale, retail and car trade, mining and building, companies conducting re-export, and the goods trade carried out by companies operating in the service industries. International trade in services is not included in the statistics.

The statistics describe cross-border goods trade according to the region of Finland that the company has indicated in the Intrastat declaration on export or import or the customs declaration. One company may have many offices in Finland, which are reported to Customs using, in addition to the business ID, also the office ID of the company. Some large companies lodge their declarations in a centralised manner, in which case there is no office-specific information available in the Intrastat or customs declarations. In such cases, the office-specific distribution for these large companies has been estimated by Customs according to the office-specific declarations of previous years. Efforts have also been made to correct the location of the company in the data if the company, according to information obtained by Customs, has actual production in another region than the one where the head office of the company is located. The changes in the value of the regions’ exports and imports from year to year may to some extent be due to these manual adjustments made in the data, especially if a region’s exports or imports are very concentrated.

Information on intra-EU trade, that is, the trade between the EU member states, is collected through the Intrastat system from operators obliged to provide information. The system includes only the companies which exceed the threshold value for import and/or export which is set each year. The only data available on the intra-EU trade conducted by companies excluded from Intrastat is the information provided in declarations submitted to the Tax Administration. As regards the periodic tax return data, the total value of Community acquisitions or sales is used. As the periodic tax return data does not contain any country-specific information on international trade or any goods category details, the only information that can be provided in the statistics for these companies is the total value of their international trade in terms of import and export, and the branches of industry. Information on extra-EU trade, that is, the trade with non-EU countries, is obtained from the customs clearance system.

The export statistics are compiled based on the FOB value (“free on board”) at the border of Finland, and the import statistics based on the CIF value (“cost, insurance and freight”) at the border. The classification used in the compilation of the statistics is the European Community’s classification of Economic Activities (NACE/TOL). In the statistics, these economic activities are grouped under manufacturing, trade and other activities in the following way:
manufacturing = category C: Manufacturing
trade = category G: Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles
other economic activities = other categories (other than C and G).

In the first step of the statistics compilation process, the company-specific statistical data on extra-EU trade is combined with the declaration-specific postal codes, while the statistical data on intra-EU trade is combined with the postal codes found in the Intrastat address details in Customs’ customer register. Those observations that remain below the threshold value for intra-EU trade, and missing observations, are extracted from the Tax Administration’s periodic tax return data. The data on intra-EU and extra-EU trade are then combined. In the next step, the postal codes of businesses with an annual import or export value of more than five million euros are corrected, as needed, in the data at office level. Lastly, any missing postal code information is supplemented with information extracted from the company address chart maintained by Customs Statistics, after which the data are combined with Statistics Finland’s correspondence table between postal code and region. Based on the data thus compiled, the exports and imports by region are summarised.

In the last step, the data of the previous step is combined with the industrial classification (TOL) and type of ownership (OTY) information of the company address chart at Business ID level. Then the export and import statistics are summarised according to industrial classification and type of ownership.

The statistical method for counting the number of offices of businesses that engage in exports and imports has changed in the statistical publication for 2024. The data for 2023 have also been calculated using the new method. Due to this change, the data for the years 2023 and 2024 are not comparable to previous years.