International Trade: Countries by Their Major Exports

Concentration Index of Exports estimates to what extent a country relies on a certain group of commodities. Countries, which are over depending on the export of the definite commodity group as a primary source of the foreign income, are vulnerable to changes in global demand because export earning depends on foreign currencies.

According to Policy Research Working Paper, countries that are resource-rich are less diversified. These countries did not try to create a greater variety of exported product, and for now, they are dependent on a small number of resources they specified.  Last year Iraq took first place in Export Concentration Index rating, 97% of Iraq's export is Mineral Fuels, namely Oil. The statistic shows many countries with high concentration index are main oil exporters in the world such as Iraq, Iran, Angola, Kuwait, Nigeria and some other countries, mostly they are OPEC members. 

Approximately 63% of Russian export is accounted for by the group of mineral fuels, that is 18,25% from The World Export in this Category. Because of the absence of the diversification, oil price shock that was in 2014 had a pernicious effect on Russia's economy, World Bank Report shows.

The main exported commodity's group for a big number of countries is Precious or semi-precious stones and metals. Botswana export of this category in 2015 was 84% from all exported goods. Botswana is one of the biggest countries at diamond recovery in the world. And the export of precious stones is almost 5% of World's export of natural pearls. 

Korea’s Export Concentration Index is high, namely 0.37 in 2015, but this economy is not raw material producing. Korea focuses on machinery manufacturing. Its main exported products are ships, cars, computers, and other electronic items. Export of this commodity group composes 5.32% of World’s Export and 52% of Country’s Export.

The most developed economies in the world remain on the bottom of the rating. The country that did not rely on the export of one group of the product is Italy, it occupied the last positions for a long time in this rating. It can be clearly seen that almost all European Union countries have low Export Index. 

World export fell off by 19% in 2015 (by $3'488 billion), oil export dropped rapidly almost twice - from $2'364 billion to $1'184 billion. In 2014 the most exported Commodity Groups in monetary term was Mineral fuels, mineral oils and products of their distillation. In comparison with 2015, it was another category - Electrical machinery and Nuclear reactors, boilers.

Take a look at other International Trade-related dashboards: World Exporters and Importers | World Commodity Trade Ranking

 See also: Foreign Trade | Statistics-Trade  | World Trade Monitor | World Economy and International Trade | Trade Statistics | Trade Statistics by Country | Trade Statistics by Product | Export| Import

Select the country: