An evaluation of the balance of trade

An exclusive article for the montlhy newsletter “En la mira – The Latin American Small Arms Watch.” Click here for subscriptions and for previous issues.

Exports and imports of small arms and light weapons, parts and ammunition in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2000-2005

According to the Small Arms Survey 2006, in a list of countries that exported at least USD 10 million worth of small arms and light weapons (SALW) in 2003, two Latin American countries appear (Brazil and Mexico), in a total of 32 countries 1. Brazil, however, figures among the six countries in the world which exported more than USD 100 million 2. On the imports side, Latin America three countries which declared more than USD 10 million appear (Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela), out of a total of  39 countries 3. The region was responsible for 5% of world exports in 2003, which totaled USD 2 billion 4. According to Small Arms Survey, Russia and the United States alone exported USD 801 billion worth of arms. Latin America may not be one of the most relevant actors on the international small arms and light weapons (SALW) market, nevertheless, gathering and analyzing information regarding these products’ external commerce is of extreme importance in a region which, according to recent studies, concentrates 42% of homicides caused by firearms in the world 5.

The purpose of this report is to inform about the movement of SALW imports and exports, ammunition and parts during the current decade, from the perspective of the information provided by the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean 6. Based on customs declarations the countries handed to the United Nations, the questions answered in this report are: who bought? From whom? What? And when?

It is important to highlight that we do not pretend to understand with this report the reasons why Latin American countries sold or bought SALW. We know however that this is an important question, above all because the region has one of the highest rates of firearm related homicides in the world. Beyond informing, we do hope to trigger, by means of the information offered, the curiosity of other researchers, activists and state civil servants so that they can further investigate the transparency of these data as well as who is using these imported and exported arms, and how.

The data used in this report were collected from the database of Norwegian Initiative on Small Arms Transfers (Nisat), which stores more than 800,000 SALW transaction registries, from 1962 onwards. Nisat also works with different sources of data, among them United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN-Comtrade) 7. We decided to use only data from UN Comtrade for this report because, supposedly, all countries report their commercial transactions to the UN. These data are declared through a Harmonized System (HS) of commodity classification. The HS has been in existence since 1992 and was updated in 1996, 2002 and 2007. On the period analyzed, we are working with data up to 2005, since until the research’s completion this was the last available year at Nisat.

We work with monetary values, since most countries declare their transactions in US dollars, as well as with the commodity’s weight, yet only a small minority of countries declares the quantity of products commercialized. An important point to be considered is which categories of the HS were used in the research. The SALW, spare parts and ammunition were divided by type, each one of them corresponding to a category from the group of codes of the HS. The types were classified following a similar standard than that used by Nisat.

 
Table 1 – Classification of SALW, spare parts and ammunition:

Apart from the non-notification of quantities, the Comtrade data suffer from two limitations derived from the changes made to the classification system and from the sub-notification or purely incorrect notification of certain categories by some countries. For alleged national security reasons it is very common for customs to omit communicating import and exports destined to the armed forces and to the public security force. These data usually correspond to HS code 930100 (military weapons). On the other hand, until 2002 all conventional firearms, including heavy armament (such as artillery pieces for example) were jumbled into code 930100. As of 2002, the military weapons category was split into code 930190 - which includes small military arms such as machineguns, sub-machine guns, assault rifles and military shotguns - and code 930120 - which includes light weapons, such as grenade launchers, portable anti-tank arms, etc. This means that, since 2002 and when the countries declared them, it has been possible to separate light conventional arms from heavy ones. For data prior to 2002, the risk always exists that, within code 930100 one also finds data on heavy armament. To alleviate this problem the data declared in code 930100 have been compared with the international heavy weapons transfer database of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri). The coinciding entries between the Nisat and the Sipri data have been disregarded and eliminated from the sample. These cases are indicated in footnotes in the report.

There are also limitations regarding the sub-notification and misclassification of some categories by some states. Some of these problems were identified in previous research works and are pointed and corrected in this report.

The report is divided into two parts: the first one compares the commercial balance of SALW, spare parts and ammunition of Latin America and the Caribbean with the world according to importer, exporter and types of products. The second part is a supplement that presents specific data on this type of commerce individually, country by country.

To read the full report in pdf form click here.

Consultations, comments or doubts about the report, contact Júlio Cesar Purcena, [email protected]

1 Small Arms Survey. Small Arms Survey 2006: Unfinished Business Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 68-73.

2 Small Arms Survey 2006,  pp. 65-66.

3 Ibid.  pp. 75-78.

4 Ibid. p. 66.

5 Small Arms Survey, Small Arms Survey 2004, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p.176

6 When we refer to Latin America and the Caribbean, we consider the following countries and territories: Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Granada, Guatemala, Guiana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and Venezuela; United States dependencies: Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands; French overseas territory: French Guiana, Guadeloupe and Martinique; Netherlands dependencies: Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao; e British colonies: Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Turks and Caicos Islands. There are 32 countries and 14 territories under foreign administration, totalizing 46 different regions.

7 For more information on UN-Comtrade data see: Small Arms Survey. Small Arms Survey 2005: Weapons at War Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 99.