New United Nations statistics released Tuesday show that a billion dollars can mean a lot or a little, depending on the national context.
The UN Conference on Trade and Developments, UNCTAD, Handbook of Statistics 2003 points out that Brazils revenue from coffee exports declined by 1 billion dollars between 1999 and 2001 while Slovenia took in 1 billion dollars in tourist expenditures in 2001. – When it comes to magnitude, everything is relative, UNCTAD says.
The same 1 billion dollars is the amount of gross domestic product (GDP) shared by 27.000 Norwegians and by 10 million Ethiopians, according to the agency. It is the total in tariff revenues on manufactured product imports collected by Indonesia, Algeria or South Africa.
A billion dollars is the amount of foreign direct investment inflows to Argentina in 2002, as well as the annual level of trade among the 15 small members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM). It is 0.6 per cent of the European Unions (EU) agriculture value added or 11 per cent of the value of Africas total agriculture exports to the EU in 2001, UNCTAD said.
One billion dollars also represents 10 per cent of the estimated value of Indias total remittances from abroad, or 10 per cent of that countrys trade deficit, according to the Handbook.
The Handbook can be bought from www.unctad.org/statistics/handbook
