An inter-agency working group comprising of Eurostat, the International Trade Centre (ITC), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has been established to support the implementation of SDMX standards in International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS).

The working group, which develops these new standards, seeks to specify uniform structures, concept definitions and code lists for IMTS data and metadata which comply with the latest version of the SDMX standard (2.1), and which follow the latest recommendations for IMTS (IMTS 2010) since 2013. To the extent possible, SDMX-IMTS reuses concepts and code lists that have been already agreed internationally. The draft Data Structure Definition (DSD) for SDMX-IMTS is available at http://comtrade.un.org/sdmx.

Global online consultation has been initiated between May and June 2015 to receive broad input on the proposed DSD for IMTS. All details of the consultation, including how to access the questionnaire and what is expected of the review of the DSD can be found in the Information Note.

For any other inquiries, please contact tradestat@un.org.