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Brazil BOL 2023 comparison against MDIC and COMTRADE

Introduction and data used

This analysis compares Brazil 2023 Bill of Lading (BOL) data with Brazil’s official export statistics (MDIC) and the UN’s trade statistics (COMTRADE), before and after padding the BOL with missing flows from MDIC.

It gives context around export gaps, as the 2023 BOL doesn’t include all export data, it only includes maritime exports, and it has general differences in how data is reported in MDIC and COMTRADE. For example, the BOL’s destination country reports where the goods are unloaded - which might not be the same as the final export destination country as in MDIC.

Documentation of available fields in each dataset and what they represent, as well as a link to explore them can be found in each data source’s dbt table documentation linked below.

The main data used for this analysis is:

Main observations

  1. There are a couple of hs6 codes that seem to be reported with slightly different codes between the BOL and MDIC/COMTRADE.
  2. Some destination countries that appear in BOL don’t appear -or barely appear- in MDIC (in particular SINGAPORE and to a lesser extent MALAYSIA). Probably this is because these countries are re-exporting hubs for some hs6s instead of final export destinations. Note that the destination country of the BOL is based on the field PLACE_AND_PORTS_DEST_COUNTRY, which represents the “Country where the carrier delivered the cargo” (see the BOL’s dbt documentation above).
  3. The BOL has some hs6 soy records with destination country “EUROPEAN UNION” which is clearly not a single country as such.
  4. The MDIC includes non-maritime exports. They tend to be a small portion of each export code (visualized later on), except for hs6 0201 (fresh/chilled beef) which goes mostly to neighbouring countries.
  5. Live animals (0102) is almost absent in the BOL for 2023, which was a limitation announced by the vendor. 2024 data has better data for this hs code.

Description of hs4’s containing SOY and BEEF in the BOL

This is the general description of each relevant hs4 code present in the BOL, and the total tonnes reported.

commodity hs4 Mtonnes description
SOY 1201 94.396 Soya beans, whether or not broken
SOY 2304 19.951 Oil-cake and other solid residues; whether or not ground or in the form of pellets, resulting from the extraction of soya-bean oil
SOY 1507 2.020 Soya-bean oil and its fractions; whether or not refined, but not chemically modified
BEEF 0202 1.864 Meat of bovine animals; frozen
BEEF 0206 0.137 Edible offal of bovine animals, swine, sheep, goats, horses, asses, mules or hinnies; fresh, chilled or frozen
BEEF 0504 0.104 Guts, bladders and stomachs of animals (other than fish); whole and pieces thereof, fresh, chilled, frozen, salted, in brine, dried or smoked
BEEF 1602 0.102 Prepared or preserved meat, meat offal or blood
BEEF 0201 0.077 Meat of bovine animals; fresh or chilled
BEEF 0102 0.003 Bovine animals; live
BEEF 0210 0.002 Meat and edible meat offal; salted, in brine, dried or smoked; edible flours and meals of meat or meat offal

Before padding

HS4 tonnes comparison

The following comparison gives a general overview between the BOL, MDIC and COMTRADE. It also distinguishes maritime vs non-maritime.

These values are generated aggregating hs6 codes (taking their first 4 digits), only for hs6’s related to SOY or BEEF (ignoring hs6’s related to CHICKEN or PORK, for which there are only a few records and are not of interest).

Special observations:

  • Beef 0102 (live animals) doesn’t have many values in the BOL, which was announced by the vendor.
  • Beef 0201 (fresh or chilled meat - instead of frozen) is mostly traded by non-maritime modes, which are not captured in the BOL.
  • There seems to be a bit of overreporting for BEEF 0202 and 1602 in the BOL.

HS6 tonnes comparison

Here the comparison of the full hs6’s.

Some supporting observations:

  • The hs code 120100, while being the biggest soy hs code in the BOL, doesn’t exist in MDIC or COMTRADE. In the latter, the main code used and with similar amounts is 120190. Both hscodes refer to “SOYBEANS, WHETHER OR NOT BROKEN”.
  • The hs6 codes 150710 and 150790 are very similar (both are “SOYBEAN OIL AND ITS FRACTIONS, WHETHER OR NOT REFINED, BUT NOT CHEMICALLY MODIFIED” with 150710 being subclassified as “CRUDE OIL, WHETHER OR NOT DEGUMMED” and 150790 as “OTHER). They seem to have been reported differently in the BOL vs MDIC/COMTRADE of 2023.

Country gaps between BOL and MDIC, per HS6

Here the comparison of the top 20 destination countries (noting they have different definitions between the BOL and MDIC), per hs4 (so to make the visualization easier to read).

  • In the BOL, SINGAPORE is the second largest destination country for soy 1201, and is absent in MDIC, suggesting its role as a re-exporting hub. Though much less relevant, it also has around ~350k tonnes in soy 2304.
  • In soy 2304 (230400)
  • The destination country “EUROPEAN UNION” appears as the third largest country, with ~2.6 million tonnes. It also appears in soy 1201 but to a much smaller extent.

SOY country gaps between BOL and MDIC by HS4

BEEF country gaps between BOL and MDIC by HS4

After padding

Currently two things are padded using MDIC as reference, for hs6’s present in BOL: * Exports to destination countries present in MDIC but not in BOL * Non-maritime exports (which are not captured in the BOL, but are present in MDIC)

Padded records have a boolean field padded = True, and a padding_type field indicating the type of padding (hs6 country padding or non-maritime padding).

HS4 tonnes comparison

HS6 tonnes comparison

Country gaps between BOL and MDIC, per HS6

SOY country gaps between BOL and MDIC by HS4

BEEF country gaps between BOL and MDIC by HS4