Scotland’s International Goods Trade: Quarter 4 2022

This report contains trade in goods data from the latest release of HMRC's Regional Trade Statistics (RTS), which relate to international trade in goods only, including oil and gas. The figures exclude trade in services and movement of goods within the UK. This data is quarterly and covers up to the period ending December 2022. The data covers the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the first 2 years of trade following European Union (EU) Exit. These are the provisional estimates and may be revised in future.

Data is presented in current prices, which means that it also includes the effects of inflation. Caution should therefore be applied when interpreting increasing trends over recent years as these could be strongly influenced by inflation.

A portion of these statistics are presented without oil and gas (by excluding Standard Industrial Trade Classification (SITC) section 3 – Mineral fuels) due to high volatility in the data. Additionally, for Scotland, oil and gas account for a large proportion of exports.

HMRC have implemented two changes in the data sources and data collection methods for UK trade with the EU since 2021 which can be found in the RTS methodology note. These changes create breaks due to methodological changes in the time series from January 2021 for EU exports and for January 2022 for EU imports, so users should take care when making comparisons with quarters and years prior to 2021 for exports and prior to 2022 for imports.

If you have any comments or feedback, please email exports.statistics@gov.scot.