An Outline of the Fourth Revision of the Standard International Trade Classification

An outline of the fourth revision of the Standard International Trade Classification

1.  The third revision of the Standard International Trade Classification was approved by the Statistical Commission at its twenty-third session (1985). SITC, Rev.3 is defined in terms of the original Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS), which entered into force in 1988. The original HS was amended by the World Customs Organization four times. Three amended editions of the HS went in force on 1 January of 1992, 1996 and 2002. The fourth amended edition of the HS will be effective beginning 1 January 2007.

2.  In the past, in order to maintain continuity in SITC, Rev.3 series, the United Nations Statistics Division issued appropriate correlation tables between SITC, Rev.3 and each new edition of HS. However, a strict period-to-period comparability was being lost for a growing number of series (about 15 percent) due to significant changes in the HS classification scheme. New products introduced in HS are not reflected in SITC since its structure has not been revised. At the same time, the majority of countries and international organizations continue to use SITC for various purposes, such as study of long-term trends in international trade and aggregating traded commodities into classes more suitable for economic analysis. The United Nations Statistical Commission, at its thirty-fifths session (2-5 March 2004), agreed with the conclusion of the inter-agency Task Force on International Merchandise Trade Statistics that the fourth revision of the Standard International Trade Classification (SITC, Rev.4) is needed in view of accumulated changes in HS. The following provides an outline of SITC, Rev.4.

3.  The scope of SITC, Rev. 4 will be the same as of SITC, Rev.3. That is SITC, Rev.4 will cover all goods classifiable in HS except for monetary gold, gold coin and current coin.

4.  All SITC, Rev.4 basic headings will be defined in terms of HS07 subheadings except for headings of group 334.

5.  Revision will include deletion and addition of the basic headings of SITC. Scope of certain retained basic headings will be modified.

6.  Scope of all higher level headings of SITC will reflect changes in the scope of corresponding basic headings.

7.  As a general rule, an SITC heading will be:

1. deleted if (i) its scope cannot be defined as a combined scope of one or several HS07 subheading(s) [except for SITC headings of group 334], or (ii) its scope, when defined in terms of HS07, changes significantly [this may happen when involved HS07 subheadings are in a split correlation to HS88];

1. introduced if (i) products classified in new HS subheading(s) merit, in view of experts, a separate identification in SITC, and (ii) such a new heading fits into a classification scheme of SITC with no or minimal changes in the scope of the existing headings.

8.  The revision process will be coordinated with the ongoing revision of CPC and ISIC in order to synchronize these classifications as much as possible.