Low- and middle-income economies are an increasingly important part of the global trading system. Trade between high-income economies and low- and middle-income economies has grown faster than trade between high-income economies. This increased trade benefits both producers and consumers in developing and high-income economies.

At the regional level most exports from low- and middle-income economies are to high-income economies, but the share of intraregional trade is increasing. Geographic patterns of trade vary widely by country and commodity. Larger shares of exports from oil- and resource-rich economies are to high-income economies.
Merchandise exports to high-income economies (% of total merchandise exports)
Data on exports and imports are from the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) Direction of Trade database and should be broadly consistent with data from other sources, such as the United Nations Statistics Division's Commodity Trade (Comtrade) database. All high-income economies and major low- and middle-income economies report trade data to the IMF on a timely basis, covering about 85 percent of trade for recent years. Trade data for less timely reporters and for countries that do not report are estimated using reports of trading partner countries. Therefore, data on trade between developing and high-income economies should be generally complete. But trade flows between many low- and middle-income economies - particularly those in Sub-Saharan Africa - are not well recorded, and the value of trade among low- and middle-income economies may be understated.
Merchandise exports to high-income economies are the sum of merchandise exports from the reporting economy to high-income economies according to the World Bank classification of economies. Data are expressed as a percentage of total merchandise exports by the economy. Data are computed only if at least half of the economies in the partner country group had non-missing data.
Merchandise exports to high-income economies are the sum of merchandise exports from the reporting economy to high-income economies according to the World Bank classification of economies. Data are expressed as a percentage of total merchandise exports by the economy.