How does North Macedonia’s trade profile look? Level of exports and imports over thirty years, structural composition, partner concentration, and the position on the economic-complexity frontier.
North Macedonia: merchandise exports and imports, 1996-2024 (incl. 2025 preliminary)
Exports grew from $1.4B in 1996 to $9.5B in 2024, a CAGR of 7.0%. The merchandise balance sits at -$2.8B, which is -30% of exports , a simple scale normalisation over the available BACI series. Note that exports are f.o.b. and imports c.i.f., so a meaningful portion of the gap reflects freight and insurance baked into the import valuation rather than a real shortfall in receipts (CIF/FOB spreads typically run 5-10% per UNCTAD/IMF BOP methodology, but country-specific values vary). The more conventional open-economy metric is the current- account balance as % of GDP, reported on the /macro/MKD page. The short 2024-2025 segment is preliminary, from North Macedonia’s own UN Comtrade filing rather than BACI: exports of $9.0B (+7.4% vs 2024) and imports of $13.0B (+9.0%), with both years of the segment on that same as-reported basis. Levels differ from the BACI lines because BACI harmonises mirror flows and re-exports; the 2025 BACI release will supersede these points.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), f.o.b. exports and c.i.f. imports, summed across all reporters. 2025 points: UN Comtrade annual, as reported (retrieved 2026-08-18), preliminary.Query
SELECT year, total_exports*1000 AS exports_usd, total_imports*1000 AS imports_usd, trade_balance*1000 AS balance_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_totals.parquet'
WHERE country_code = 807 ORDER BY year;
The structural change in what a country exports, from agriculture to manufactures to services, or between HS sections, is one of the most studied transitions in development economics (Imbs & Wacziarg 2003; Hausmann, Hwang & Rodrik 2007). The chart below shows the five largest HS sections of North Macedonia’s exports in 2024, plotted back thirty years.
Figure 2
Top-5 HS sections of exports, 1996-2024
Figure 2b
Export basket by HS chapter, 2024 · top-30 $9.0B of $9.5B total
Figure 2c
Import basket by HS chapter, 2024 · top-30 $10.5B of $12.3B total
Who it sells to
Figure 3a
World map of export destinations, 2024
Figure 3b
Top 12 export destinations, 2024
What moved exports between years
The line charts above show levels over time; they do not answer the analyst’s next question: when exports changed between 2023 and 2024, which partners and which products accounted for how much of it? The two bridge charts below answer that directly. Contributors are ordered by absolute dollar change, largest first, and every line outside the top 8 is collapsed into one residual bar so the columns still sum exactly to the total move.
Partners
Figure 3c. Export change by partner, 2023-2024
Exports moved from $10.2B to $9.5B (−$756.6M).
Year totalsIncrease on continuing linesEntry from zeroExit to zero / declineAll other residual
Tables used: bilateral_year + countries.parquet. Contributors are ordered by absolute dollar change, largest first; the residual bar is appended last. After the top 8 named contributors, every remaining line is collapsed into one exact arithmetic residual bar so the bridge reconciles to the total change. Entry bars are partners that rose from zero; exit bars fell to zero, so no growth rate is printed for them.Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), bilateral_year export flows for 2023 and 2024, values scaled from thousands USD to USD.
Products
Figure 3d. Export change by product, 2023-2024
Exports moved from $10.2B to $9.5B (−$756.6M).
Year totalsIncrease on continuing linesEntry from zeroExit to zero / declineAll other residual
Tables used: country_year_product + products.parquet. Contributors are ordered by absolute dollar change, largest first; the residual bar is appended last. After the top 8 named contributors, every remaining line is collapsed into one exact arithmetic residual bar so the bridge reconciles to the total change. Entry bars are HS6 lines that were zero in 2023; exit bars fell to zero in 2024.Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), country_year_product export flows for 2023 and 2024, values scaled from thousands USD to USD.
Economic complexity
The Economic Complexity Index (ECI), building on Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009, PNAS) and formalized as the eigenvalue (second-eigenvector) index in the Atlas of Economic Complexity, ranks countries by the productive knowledge embedded in their export basket. Countries that export many products, and whose products are also exported by few others, score high. ECI is predictive of subsequent income growth and structural transformation; see Hausmann et al. (2014, The Atlas of Economic Complexity, MIT Press) for the full methodology and the comparative country atlas. For a non-linear alternative that ranks fast-diversifying economies differently (China, for instance, sits far higher on fitness than on ECI), compare the Economic Fitness metric of Tacchella et al. (2012).
Figure 4a
North Macedonia: ECI trajectory, 1996-2024
Current ECI: 0.02, ranked #116 of 226 economies in 2024. ECI is zero-centered; positive values mean above-median complexity.
Method: ECI = second eigenvector of the reflections matrix on the BACI RCA≥1 matrix, z-standardized (eigenvalue method of the Atlas of Economic Complexity, Hausmann et al. 2014). Framework: Hidalgo & Hausmann (2009) “The Building Blocks of Economic Complexity,” PNAS 106(26): 10570-10575, whose method of reflections is equivalent to the eigenvector form (Mealy, Farmer & Teytelboym 2019, Science Advances).Figure 4b
Export concentration (HHI) and product count, 1996-2024
2024 HHI = 0.051, equivalent to about 19.6 equally-sized product lines.North Macedonia exports 3,208 distinct HS6 products. Rising HHI or falling effective-N indicates loss of diversification.
Revealed comparative advantage (Balassa 1965) says a country is specialised in a product when its share of that product’s world exports exceeds the country’s share of all world exports. A stronger version asks: which HS6 lines does the country lead the world in? The table below lists the ten largest export lines (by value) where North Macedonia ranks in the world top-5 in 2024, restricted to products with at least US$10M of global trade so tiny niches don’t crowd out economically meaningful positions. This is the “niche leadership” view: products the country is not just diversified in, but competitive at the frontier.
Figure 5
North Macedonia: top 10 HS6 lines with world top-5 rank, 2024
North Macedonia holds a top-5 world-export position in 3of its largest export lines (HS6 products with ≥ US$10M world trade, 2024). The leading niche is HS 381512 , Catalysts, supported: reaction initiators, reaction accelera , where it ranks #3 globally with 15.4% of world exports. Dominant niches are the revealed-comparative-advantage anchors a trade-shock or industrial- policy analysis should start from.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), HS6 exporter rankings, 2024. Restricted to products with ≥ US$10M world trade. Method: Balassa (1965) RCA taken to its rank-based extreme, top-5 world rank is a stringent specialisation test.
Peer countries by structural profile
Which economies share the closest structural profile to North Macedonia? Each country is placed in a three-dimensional space of economic complexity (ECI), log GDP per capita, and log total exports, each standardised to zero mean and unit variance in 2024. The five nearest neighbours by Euclidean distance in that space are North Macedonia’s closest structural peers, similar on productive-capability, income level, and scale of external trade. This is a trade-specific adaptation of the synthetic-control “donor pool” logic (Abadie, Diamond & Hainmueller 2010).
Figure 6
North Macedonia: five closest structural peers, 2024
Closest structural peer: Georgia (ECI 0.10, GDP-pc $9,241, exports $6.6B). Bar length encodes peer proximity in the standardised (ECI, log GDP-pc, log exports) space, shorter bars are closer structural matches. This is the peer set to benchmark trade-policy outcomes against, rather than regional or income-group aggregates. The metric matches on capability frontier and scale, not on sector mix, so countries with similar export composition but different ECI (e.g. higher-complexity apparel exporters) will not appear here.
Margins of export growth
Hummels & Klenow (2005, “The variety and quality of a nation’s exports,” American Economic Review95(3): 704-723) introduced the split of a country’s exports into an extensive margin (the set of goods it ships) and an intensive margin (how much of each). In their own measure the extensive margin is nota raw line count: following Feenstra (1994), each category is weighted by its importance in world trade. The figure below applies a simplified, count-based version of that distinction to one country’s export growth over time, so the levels are a proxy, not the Feenstra-weighted index. The two margins still respond to different levers: trade-cost reductions and discovery push the extensive margin (Melitz 2003), while productivity and demand push the intensive.
Figure 7
Margins of export growth, 2014-2024
Over 10 years, total exports grew at 5.3%/yr. Decomposition: HS6 line count moved from 3,016 to 3,208 (extensive margin 0.6%/yr); average value per line moved from $1.9M to $3.0M (intensive margin 4.6%/yr). The intensive margin dominates, which under the extensive/intensive logic indicates growth via deepening sales of existing lines (productivity, scale, or quality).
Method: simplified count-based margin decomposition. The extensive/intensive distinction is from Hummels & Klenow (2005) AER 95(3): 704-723, whose own extensive margin is Feenstra (1994) world-trade-weighted, not a line count. Here, extensive margin = CAGR of distinct HS6 export lines; intensive margin = CAGR of (total exports / line count); total CAGR ≈ extensive + intensive (log-linear approximation).Query
SELECT h.year, h.num_products, t.total_exports*1000 AS exports_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_hhi.parquet' h
JOIN 'data/parquet/country_year_totals.parquet' t USING(country_code, year)
WHERE h.country_code = 807 AND h.year IN (2014, 2024);
Export basket on the complexity frontier
Figure 8
North Macedonia: export value vs. product complexity (PCI), 2024
Related
Value-chain position, domestic vs foreign value added in North Macedonia’s exports, VAX ratio, and upstream/downstream index (OECD TiVA)
Economic Fitness, the non-linear Tacchella-Pietronero complexity ranking, and how it diverges from ECI
Research index, analytical pieces grounded in BACI flows and gravity covariates
Sector monitor, quarterly deep dives on 12 HS-defined sectors
In 2024, the top three HS sections account for 61% of merchandise exports that map to a HS96 section, a rough measure of sectoral concentration at the coarsest classification level. Shares here are over BACI exports that carry a valid HS96 section mapping, so the five-section series does not sum to 100% of total exports: some HS6 codes (newer HS revisions, non-standard codes) fall outside the 21-section mapping. Note that the top-5 sections are selected by 2024 share, so a section that was dominant in 1996 but has since fallen out of the top 5 will not appear on the chart.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01) crossed with HS96 section codes. Shares are over the HS6-mapped universe; HS6 codes without an HS92 section fall outside the 21-section totals.
Cell area is proportional to 2024 export value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of North Macedonia’s exports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue (e.g. minerals, machinery, textiles). The largest chapter, HS 38 , Chemical products n.e.c., represents 24.7% of the top-30chapter total shown. Compared to Figure 2’s five-section trajectory, this view exposes which specific chapters within the dominant sections drive the overall composition.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), f.o.b. exports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 2024. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.Query
SELECT SUBSTRING(product_code, 1, 2) AS chapter_code,
ANY_VALUE(p.chapter) AS chapter_name,
p.section,
SUM(cyp.export_value) * 1000 AS value_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet' cyp
JOIN 'data/parquet/products.parquet' p ON p.code = cyp.product_code
WHERE cyp.country_code = 807 AND cyp.export_value > 0 AND p.section IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY chapter_code, p.section
ORDER BY value_usd DESC LIMIT 30;
Cell area is proportional to 2024 import value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of North Macedonia’s imports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue. The largest import chapter, HS 85 , Electrical machinery and equipment and parts thereof; sound recorders and reproducers; television image and sound recorders and reproducers, parts and accessories of such articles, represents 15.3% of the top-30 chapter total shown. Read alongside Figure 2b to compare what North Macedonia sells abroad against what it buys in.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), c.i.f. imports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 2024. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.Query
SELECT SUBSTRING(product_code, 1, 2) AS chapter_code,
ANY_VALUE(p.chapter) AS chapter_name,
p.section,
SUM(cyp.import_value) * 1000 AS value_usd
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet' cyp
JOIN 'data/parquet/products.parquet' p ON p.code = cyp.product_code
WHERE cyp.country_code = 807 AND cyp.import_value > 0 AND p.section IS NOT NULL
GROUP BY chapter_code, p.section
ORDER BY value_usd DESC LIMIT 30;
Each country is shaded by the bilateral value of North Macedonia’s exports to it in 2024, binned into quintiles. North Macedonia itself is tinted in amber as the origin; white indicates destinations with no recorded bilateral flow. The map makes regional dependency structures visible, neighbours, former colonial ties, bloc partners, in ways a top-list ordering hides.
Partner concentration measures market exposure. The single largest destination absorbs 36% of North Macedonia’s exports; the top 3 together take 50%. Concentrated partner bases make bilateral shocks (trade wars, recessions) first-order.
Source: CEPII BACI 202601 (retrieved 2026-06-01), bilateral exports 2024. Shares are over total exports.
Query
WITH prod_year AS (
SELECT product_code, country_code, SUM(export_value) AS v
FROM 'data/parquet/country_year_product/year=2024/*.parquet'
WHERE export_value > 0 GROUP BY product_code, country_code
), ranked AS (
SELECT product_code, country_code, v,
RANK() OVER (PARTITION BY product_code ORDER BY v DESC) AS world_rank
FROM prod_year
WHERE product_code IN (SELECT product_code FROM prod_year GROUP BY product_code HAVING SUM(v)*1000 >= 1e7)
)
SELECT product_code, v*1000 AS value_usd, world_rank
FROM ranked WHERE country_code = 807 AND world_rank <= 5
ORDER BY v DESC LIMIT 10;
Method: z-score each dimension (ECI, log GDP-pc, log total exports) across the universe of countries with all three observations in the latest year; rank by Euclidean distance. Abadie, Diamond & Hainmueller (2010) “Synthetic Control Methods for Comparative Case Studies,” JASA 105(490): 493-505.
Each dot is one HS6 product in North Macedonia’s basket with more than US$1M in exports in 2024 (long-tail marginal exports below that floor are filtered out so the scatter is legible; the filter drops many HS6 codes for small economies and few for large ones). Horizontal = export value (log), vertical = Product Complexity Index (PCI). Dots upper-right are high-value, high-complexity products (machinery, precision instruments). Lower-left products carry less productive knowledge per dollar. A basket shifted toward the upper-right correlates with higher ECI and higher income.
Method: PCI = product loadings from the second-eigenvector complexity decomposition of the country-product RCA matrix (eigenvalue method of the Atlas of Economic Complexity, Hausmann et al. 2014; framework from Hidalgo & Hausmann 2009, PNAS; eigenvector form equivalent to the method of reflections, Mealy et al. 2019). Basket restricted to HS6 exports > US$1M in the latest year.
where North Macedonia is exposed
Data processing machines: portable, digital and automatic, weighing not more than 10kg, consisting of at least a central processing unit, a keyboard and a display (847130): imports 82% from China. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Air conditioning machines: comprising a motor-driven fan and elements for changing the temperature and humidity, window or wall types, self-contained (841510): imports 73% from China. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Medicaments: containing insulin (but not containing antibiotics), for therapeutic or prophylactic uses, packaged for retail sale (300431): imports 100% from European Union (EU27). Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure.
Lignite: whether or not pulverised, but not agglomerated, excluding jet (270210): imports 97% from European Union (EU27). Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure.
Vegetable oils: palm oil and its fractions, other than crude, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified (151190): imports 61% from Indonesia. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
where North Macedonia could grow
Machine-tools: parts and accessories, for the machines of heading no. 8465 (846692): proximity 0.12 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.19, world market $1.9bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Machine-tools: parts and accessories, for the machines of heading no. 8456 to 8461 (846693): proximity 0.11 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.23, world market $6.9bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Railway or tramway rolling stock: parts n.e.s. in heading no. 8607 (860799): proximity 0.13 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.01, world market $5.2bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Furnaces: parts of furnace burners, for liquid fuel, pulverized solid fuel or gas, mechanical stokers, grates, ash dischargers and the like (841690): proximity 0.13 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.03, world market $1.1bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Plastics: monofilament, of plastics n.e.s. in heading no. 3916, cross-sectional dimension exceeds 1mm, rods, sticks and profile shapes, whether or not surface-worked but not otherwise worked (391690): proximity 0.13 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.00, world market $2.8bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
North Macedonia trade-riskGlobal risk rank #175 of 200 (board)
supplier concentration78.9%
price stress 12m15.5%
price coverage4.6%
Dependency diagnosis
Data processing machines: portable, digital and automatic, weighing not more than 10kg, consisting of at least a central processing unit, a keyboard and a display(847130): you import 81.7% from China. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.51. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: VNM 12.8%, NLD 3.1%, DEU 1.9%, S19 1.8%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Air conditioning machines: comprising a motor-driven fan and elements for changing the temperature and humidity, window or wall types, self-contained(841510): you import 72.9% from China. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.47. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: THA 17.6%, MYS 3.1%, KOR 1.7%, ITA 1.3%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Medicaments: containing insulin (but not containing antibiotics), for therapeutic or prophylactic uses, packaged for retail sale(300431): you import 100.0% from Unknown. MODERATE Moderate, world HHI 0.18; some concentration. Alternatives: DEU 27.8%, DNK 23.2%, FRA 20.2%, USA 6.7%.
Lignite: whether or not pulverised, but not agglomerated, excluding jet(270210): you import 96.6% from Unknown. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.76. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: IDN 86.7%, PHL 4.5%, RUS 3.9%, MNG 1.1%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Vegetable oils: palm oil and its fractions, other than crude, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified(151190): you import 61.2% from Indonesia. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.41. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: MYS 32.6%, NLD 2.5%, ITA 0.9%, EST 0.9%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Medicaments: containing hormones (but not insulin), adrenal cortex hormones or antibiotics, for therapeutic or prophylactic uses, packaged for retail sale(300439): you import 73.8% from Unknown. DIVERSIFIABLE Diversifiable, you are single-sourced but world supply is broad (HHI 0.09). Realistic alternatives: ITA 18.4%, DNK 14.7%, DEU 10.5%, AUT 8.6%. Policy: spread procurement across these suppliers.
Vaccines: for human medicine(300220): you import 97.7% from Unknown. MODERATE Moderate, world HHI 0.16; some concentration. Alternatives: BEL 28.6%, IRL 19.7%, USA 13.2%, FRA 8.4%.
Fabrics, woven: containing 85% or more by weight of cotton, of yarns of different colours, weighing more than 100g/m2 but not more than 200g/m2(520842): you import 59.1% from Unknown. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.39. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: CHN 61.1%, IND 10.5%, ITA 6.7%, VNM 4.5%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Compound exposures
These flows carry multiple simultaneous stressors on the same product; the averaged risk score understates them.
Vegetable oils: palm oil and its fractions, other than crude, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified from Indonesia: single-source (61.2%) + price +15% over 12m.
GeoDep 2022, world shares latest BACI year, Pink Sheet 2026M04. No real-time signal is implied.