In order to fully reflect the verification of the import and export declarations, starting from 2019, the Customs Administration will release revised import and export trade statistics of previous year every September. Furthermore, the aircraft engines imported into the bonded warehouses, logistics centers and free trade zone for repair or maintenance and re-exported afterwards will be excluded from import and export trade statistics. Materials exported after being integrated into the aircraft under repair or maintenance will be excluded from export trade statistics. Those exclusions are based on statistic guidelines recommended by United Nations. The retrospective revision since 2014 will be published along with annual revision of 2018.
   For 2018, the total exports was revised down US$ 1.9 billion to  US$ 334.0 billion(rate of revision 0.6%), and the annual growth rate was cut 0.01 percentage points to 5.87%. The total imports was revised down US$ 1.5 billion to US$ 284.8 billion (rate of revision 0.5%), which is slightly less than the downward for 2017, resulting in an increase of the annual growth rate from 10.44% to 10.73%.
    As for 2014 to 2017, the total imports and exports were all revised downwards due to the exclusions of aircraft engines and materials for repair or maintenance. The total exports each year were revised down by 0.2%-0.6%, and the total imports were revised down by 0.3%-0.8%. The annual growth rates of both imports and exports only revised slightly.
    The revision enhances the consistency between statistics and the latest customs clearance data, and also improves the accuracy of unit prices of goods. Besides, excluding aircraft engines and materials for repair or maintenance from trade of goods reflects actual production and trade behavior, as well as trade in goods and services, more properly. Furthermore, the discrepancy between the values of Taiwan imports from the U.S. and the U.S. exports to Taiwan significantly shrunk under the revised data. It decreased US$ 0.7-1.9 billion per year. The reason is that the aircraft engines imported for repair are mainly produced in the U.S. but sent from the third country, which we used to record as imported from origin country, the U.S. As to re-exported destinations for the repaired engines, re-exports to South Korea, China, and Australia are revised downwards more among them.
   The revised Customs import and export trade statistics is available online at 10:00 today. It is expected that the update will be completed by 16:00 the next day(19th) due to the large amount of data. For further details, please refer to the official website.(https://portal.sw.nat.gov.tw/APGA/GA03E).