Two consignments at the same declared value can represent very different prices. What the number includes is the whole question.
Declared value is the single most used number in trade data and the most frequently misread. It is an assessable value constructed under valuation rules, not an invoice total, and what it contains depends on the term and the jurisdiction.
| Basis | Includes | Typically used for |
|---|---|---|
| FOB | Goods, export packing, inland carriage to the port, export clearance | Export declarations |
| CIF | All of the above plus main freight and insurance to destination | Import declarations |
Country A reports its exports to country B on an FOB basis. Country B reports its imports from country A on a CIF basis. The same trade is therefore reported at two different values, and the gap is roughly the freight and insurance. Analysts who compare the two without adjusting conclude that one country is under-reporting. Usually neither is.
A rough freight-and-insurance adjustment brings mirror figures into the same frame. Comparing them raw produces a discrepancy that is an artefact of the definitions, not a finding.
When you compare declared unit values across suppliers, check that they are on the same basis. A CIF value from a distant origin carries freight that an FOB value from a nearby one does not, and reading the difference as a price gap will send you to the wrong supplier.
The controls that make a comparison valid are set out on price and unit value benchmarking, and the Incoterm behind each basis is covered in Incoterms explained.
Comparing what country A says it exported to country B against what B says it imported from A is genuinely useful — it is one of the few external checks available on trade data — but only after the definitional gap is removed. The dominant component is freight and insurance, which sits inside the import value and outside the export value. There are three further sources of difference worth knowing about: timing, because a consignment leaving in December may arrive in January and land in different years; partner attribution, because goods routed through an entrepôt may be attributed to the intermediary rather than the origin; and classification, because two administrations can code the same goods differently.
| Source of gap | Direction | Typical scale |
|---|---|---|
| Freight and insurance | Imports higher | The largest single component |
| Timing across a year boundary | Either | Material for seasonal or lumpy trade |
| Entrepôt attribution | Either | Large where a hub sits in the lane |
| Classification difference | Either | Line-specific, usually modest |
| Threshold and coverage rules | Either | Small consignments treated differently |
It is not an invoice, it is not a market price, and it is not a quotation. It is an assessable value constructed under valuation rules for the purpose of assessing duty. It can be adjusted upward for elements that are conditions of sale, it reflects the terms of the particular consignment rather than a standard offer, and in related-party transactions it may reflect a transfer price rather than an arm’s-length one. Every one of those is a reason to treat a single declared value as an observation rather than as the price.
None of that makes the number useless — it makes it a statistic rather than a fact. Aggregated across many consignments of the same line, from the same origin, in the same period, the distortions largely average out and what remains is a genuine band. The discipline is to work with distributions rather than individual rows, and to say out loud which basis the values are on whenever you present them.
A value quoted without saying whether it is FOB or CIF is not evidence. It is the single most common omission in trade analysis and the easiest to fix.
Everything above is a framework, and a framework is only worth what it survives contact with. The useful discipline is to test each assumption against what consignments actually did, because customs data is one of the few commercial sources where the underlying event — goods crossing a border — physically happened and was documented under legal obligation at the time.
Fix the tariff line before anything else. Every filter, every duty figure and every comparison downstream depends on it.
Learn more ›A single period is a snapshot. Three years separate a trend from seasonality, and let you discount the incomplete recent periods.
Learn more ›Frequency and consistency beat size. A steady mid-scale counterparty is usually a better prospect than an occasional large one.
Learn more ›Declared unit values tell you the range you are entering before you quote into it.
Learn more ›Two failure modes account for most wrong conclusions drawn from trade data, and both are easy to avoid once named. The first is reading the incomplete tail of a series as a decline — authorities publish on a lag and revise afterwards, so the last one or two periods will fill in after you look. The second is reading a value movement as a demand movement, when declared value can move because volume moved, because unit price moved, or because the product mix inside a tariff line changed.
Customs data covers goods that crossed a border. It does not cover services, domestic trade, margin, contract terms or intent. Treat it as a dated, quantified observation to corroborate — not as a conclusion that arrives finished.
The difference between teams that get value out of trade data and teams that ran one interesting project is almost never analytical sophistication. It is whether the work became a routine. A saved query reviewed weekly, a short written note against each counterparty you assessed, and a standing habit of checking the period stamp before quoting a figure will out-perform an elaborate one-off study within a quarter, because markets move and a study does not.
The second habit worth building is writing down not just what you concluded but why and when. Records get revised, prices move, and counterparties change behaviour. Six months later nobody remembers whether a supplier was rejected on volume, on price band or on timing, and without that note the assessment simply gets repeated from scratch. A one-line rationale is what converts a list into institutional knowledge, and it costs seconds at the point where the thinking has already been done.
Finally, be explicit with colleagues about the confidence attached to any figure you circulate. A declared value from a complete period, controlled for origin and unit, is strong evidence. The same figure pulled from an incomplete recent period, averaged across a whole chapter, is barely evidence at all — and the two look identical once they are in a slide. Saying which one you have is what keeps trade data credible inside an organisation over time.
Because import values are normally on a cost-insurance-freight basis and export values on a free-on-board basis. The gap is mostly freight and insurance and is definitional rather than a reporting failure.
Approximately, by adding an estimate of freight and insurance for the lane. It is an adjustment rather than a conversion, and it should be stated as such.
It changes what the transaction value includes, which feeds into the assessable value. That is why two consignments at the same declared value under different terms do not represent the same price.
Only after normalising the basis and confirming the tariff line and unit of measure match. Raw cross-country comparison of declared values is one of the more common analytical errors.
Markets refresh on their customs authority's own release cycle — monthly for most, 45 to 60 days for a few. The most recent one or two periods are always still filling in, so exclude them when you are reading a trend rather than treating the gap as a decline.
Yes. Give us the HS code or a product description and the market you care about, and we will return a sample of live customs records filed against it.
Keep reading
The next questions this one usually raises are covered in Incoterms explained, Negotiating with unit price data and The shipping bill, explained. Each picks up where this article stops, and together they cover the sequence a consignment actually goes through — classification and duty before anything moves, documentation and payment while it moves, and verification of the counterparty before any of it is committed to. Reading them in that order is usually more useful than reading them by topic.
Eleven three-letter terms decide who arranges carriage, who pays for it, and the exact point at which a shipment stops being your problem.
Learn more ›A declared unit value is not a quotation, but it is the most credible number you can put on a table that you did not get from the other side.
Learn more ›The export declaration filed with Indian customs.
Learn more ›