Goods and Services Methodology

##General Information This section contains information that does not change between releases. Caveats Classification for imports of goods Methodology for estimating travel, transportation, insurance, and government services Updates to previously published figures More information Caveats Combining services data with overseas merchandise trade information provides a picture of New Zealand's total international trade. Note that combining services data with merchandise trade data will not equal international trade as measured in our balance of payments releases. This is because we make adjustments (such as for changes of ownership) to merchandise trade data when it is included in the balance of payments. Trade in services includes transactions where no physical product changes hands, for example a New Zealand lawyer who provides advice to a client overseas or an overseas head office charging a management fee to its New Zealand branch. Classification for imports of goods Imports of goods are published on a value for duty (vfd) basis in the goods and services trade release, rather than on a cost, insurance, and freight (cif) basis. This is because insurance and freight is included as part of imports of services data, and we would be double-counting these items if we combined cif imports with services information. Imports of goods are published on a vfd basis in Overseas Trade Index statistics. In Overseas Merchandise Trade both cif and vfd are available but the headline values are on a cif basis. Methodology for estimating travel, transportation, insurance, and government services The International Trade in Services and Royalties Survey collects detailed country information for exports and imports of around 55 different service types. However, it does not collect data for travel, transportation, insurance, and government services, so we estimated country data for these services types. Here is a brief explanation of the methodology we use for these estimations. Exports of personal travel services are estimated using a combination of International Visitors Survey data, and visitor arrival figures. Exports of education travel services are estimated using student numbers by country data from the Ministry of Education's Export Education Levy. Imports of travel services are estimated using a combination of data from the 2004 Survey of Returned Travellers, and short-term resident departure figures. Exports of transportation services are estimated by adding together data from passenger, freight, and other transportation services. Passenger transportation services data is provided by airlines based in countries where tickets were sold. Freight services are estimated using merchandise trade data – the importer pays the freight on goods ordered, so freight is proportionally assigned to countries importing goods from New Zealand. Other transportation service exports are based on data from non-resident airlines and shopping companies that incur expenses (such as landing rights or port fees) while in New Zealand. This data is collected through our quarterly transportation surveys. Imports of transportation services are estimated in a similar way to exports, by adding separately estimated data from passenger, freight, and other transportation services. Passenger transportation services are estimated based on the country where the airline transporting passengers is a resident. For example, any tickets purchased for Qantas flights by New Zealand residents are considered imports of passenger transportation services from Australia. Freight services are estimated using merchandise trade data – freight expenditure is proportionally allocated based on the country that goods are imported from. Other transportation services imports come from quarterly transportation surveys of resident airlines and shipping companies. Insurance services are estimated in two parts – freight insurance and regular non-life insurance. Freight insurance is estimated in a similar way to freight transportation services. The importer of a good will pay the freight and insurance costs associated with that good, so freight insurance services by country are allocated according to proportions of imports/exports by country from merchandise trade data. Non-life insurance is collected by country in our quarterly insurance surveys, and is combined with freight data for a total picture of insurance by country. Government services by country is estimated using foreign embassy locations, as well as long-term migration figures. Any expenses that a New Zealand embassy incurs abroad are treated as imports of government services, while expenses incurred by foreign embassies in New Zealand are treated as exports of government services. Immigration fees received by the government were allocated to countries based on the number of long-term migrants arriving from each country. Updates to previously published figures The figures in this release are subject to revision when new data becomes available, and when methodology is improved to ensure the accuracy of our statistics. This year, we made revisions to include both new data, and improvements for the methodology used to produce the country breakdown of the services data. More information Statistics in this release have been produced in accordance with the Official Statistics System principles and protocols for producers of Tier 1 statistics for quality. They conform to the Statistics NZ Methodological Standard for Reporting of Data Quality. 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