International Monetary Fund
About the DOT Online Service
Pricing Information/Subscribe
Contact Us
Privacy Statement
Logon to DOT
About the DOT Online Service

The Statistics Department of the International Monetary Fund is pleased to make available to subscribers the Direction of Trade Statistics (DOT) database through an easy-to-use online service. The DOT database contains time series data from 1980. The Web interface allows subscribers to browse the database, select series of interest, display the selected series in a spreadsheet format, and save the selected series for transfer to other software systems such as Microsoft Excel®.

Direction of Trade Statistics provides critical data on the value of merchandise exports and imports between each country and all its trading partners. It reports total bilateral and multilateral exports and imports aggregated at national or regional group level.

System Overview

The DOT Online system is based on the DOT CD-ROM Browser product, and many of the functions are quite similar. DOT Online provides the same data coverage as the DOT Browser product. The DOT database contains approximately 100,000 time series covering more than 190 countries and areas and includes all series appearing on the DOT Country Pages; area and world aggregates showing trade flows between major areas of the world are also presented.

The Country and World Tables, as presented in the quarterly printed copy of DOT, are available as selection options. The Economic Concept View provides a cross-country view of the concepts in the DOT by individual or groups of countries.

Capabilities of DOT Online

DOT Online includes the following capabilities for:

  • browsing the directory tree,
  • drilling down through the structure of the database,
  • selecting either individual time series or groupings of time series within a table presentation,
  • saving selected data and metadata in a variety of formats, including a spreadsheet, and
  • saving and loading a query of selected time series.

The Statistics Department envisages that this product will be further developed and enhanced over time, and will be updated on a more frequent basis. Subscribers will be advised of further enhancements as they become available.