Page 117 - Contributed Paper Session (CPS) - Volume 4

CPS2145 Jee, Hui-Siang Brenda et al.
LNG, crude petroleum, timber products and etc. make exports an important
activity in Sarawak. In 2017, Sarawak’s exports was valued at RM97.6 billion.
The major exported products of Sarawak were LNG that contributed 43.0% of
total Sarawak’s export, followed by palm oil (11.3%), crude petroleum (10.0%),
aluminium (6.7%), condensate and other petroleum oil (5.1%) and other
products (23.9%). As the Sarawak’s top exports product, LNG was exported
more than half to Japan (57.6%), and other destinations such as Republic of
Korea (13.9%), People’s Republic of China (13.5%) and Taiwan (11.5%). Due to
the above reasons, it was significance to study Sarawak-Japan trade statistics
asymmetry by focusing on LNG product.
The main objective of this paper is to analyse the asymmetry trade statistics
between Sarawak and Japan using an empirical method. Particularly to identify
the degree of data discrepancy between Sarawak-Japan LNG trade statistics
and also assess the quality of data.
The following was the organisation of this paper: Section 2 described the
methodology used in this study. Section 3 showed the empirical results and
discussion. Finally, Section 4 presented the conclusion of this study.

2. Methodology
In conducting this study, time series annual data spanning from 2008 to
2017 were adopted. The variables used in this study includes Sarawak’s exports
of LNG to Japan that was obtained from various issues of Sarawak External
Trade Statistics published by Department of Statistics Malaysia, and Japan’s
imports of LNG from Sarawak that was compiled from Trade Statistics of Japan
published by Ministry of Finance Japan. All the variables were expressed in US
Dollar by converting the local currency to US Dollar based on the exchange
rate taken from International Financial Statistics published by International
Monetary Fund.
By referring to Guo (2010), this study applied a bilateral trade discrepancy
index to gauge trade asymmetry between two trade partners. The formula is
as below:

−
=

AB
where M is the imports value reported by B from A (country B is the
AB
reporting country and A is the partner country) and E represents the exports
value reported by A to B (country A is the reporting country and B is the
partner country).

In the case of country A as an exporter, it measures the difference between
AB
the imports reported by B from A (M ) and the exports reported by A to B
(E ) as a proportion of imports reported by B from A.
AB
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