How does Timor-Leste’s trade profile look? Level of exports and imports over thirty years, structural composition, partner concentration, and the position on the economic-complexity frontier.
exports 2024$88.8M
imports 2024$1.0B
balance-$937.5M
eci rank#187 / 226
products exported346
data vintageBACI 202501 (2024, ~12 mo lag)
Figure 1
Timor-Leste: merchandise exports and imports, 1995-2024
Exports grew from $822K in 1995 to $88.8M in 2024, a CAGR of 17.5%. The merchandise balance sits at -$937.5M, which is -1055% 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/TLS page.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), f.o.b. exports and c.i.f. imports, summed across all reporters.Figure 1b
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 Timor-Leste’s exports in 2024, plotted back thirty years.
Figure 2
Top-5 HS sections of exports, 1995-2024
Figure 2b
Export basket by HS chapter, 2024 · top-30 $88.8M of $88.8M total
Figure 2c
Import basket by HS chapter, 2024 · top-30 $921.6M of $1.0B total
Who it sells to
Figure 3a
World map of export destinations, 2024
Figure 3b
Top 12 export destinations, 2024
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
Timor-Leste: ECI trajectory, 1995-2024
Current ECI: -1.02, ranked #187 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, 1995-2024
2024 HHI = 0.547, equivalent to about 1.8 equally-sized product lines.Timor-Leste exports 346 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 Timor-Leste 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
Timor-Leste: top 10 HS6 lines with world top-5 rank, 2024
No data available for this chart.
Timor-Leste does not currently rank in the world top-5 exporters of any HS6 line above the US$10M threshold in 2024.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), 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 Timor-Leste? 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 Timor-Leste’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
Timor-Leste: five closest structural peers, 2024
Closest structural peer: Guinea-Bissau (ECI -0.83, GDP-pc $1,008, exports $216.5M). 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 -3.7%/yr. Decomposition: HS6 line count moved from 264 to 346 (extensive margin 2.7%/yr); average value per line moved from $489K to $257K (intensive margin -6.2%/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).
Export basket on the complexity frontier
Figure 8
Timor-Leste: export value vs. product complexity (PCI), 2024
Each dot is one HS6 product in Timor-Leste’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.
Related
Value-chain position, domestic vs foreign value added in Timor-Leste’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 95% of merchandise exports that map to an HS92 section, a rough measure of sectoral concentration at the coarsest classification level. Shares here are over BACI exports that carry a valid HS92 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 1995 but has since fallen out of the top 5 will not appear on the chart.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28) crossed with HS92 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 Timor-Leste’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 27 , Mineral fuels, mineral oils and products of their distillation; bituminous substances; mineral waxes, represents 72.3% 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 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), f.o.b. exports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 2024. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.
Cell area is proportional to 2024 import value. The treemap shows the top 30 HS chapters (HS2 level) of Timor-Leste’s imports; cells are colour-coded by HS section so structurally related chapters share a hue. The largest import chapter, HS 87 , Vehicles; other than railway or tramway rolling stock, and parts and accessories thereof, represents 12.7% of the top-30 chapter total shown. Read alongside Figure 2b to compare what Timor-Leste sells abroad against what it buys in.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), c.i.f. imports of HS6 codes aggregated to HS2 chapters, 2024. Restricted to top 30 chapters by value.
Each country is shaded by the bilateral value of Timor-Leste’s exports to it in 2024, binned into quintiles. Timor-Leste 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 72% of Timor-Leste’s exports; the top 3 together take 85%. Concentrated partner bases make bilateral shocks (trade wars, recessions) first-order.
Source: CEPII BACI 202501 (retrieved 2026-04-28), bilateral exports 2024. Shares are over total exports.
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.
Timor-Leste trade-riskGlobal risk rank #78 of 200 (board)
supplier concentration87.5%
price stress 12m15.5%
price coverage18.6%
Dependency diagnosis
Cranes: transporter, gantry and bridge cranes(842619): you import 100.0% from China. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.37. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: IRL 8.3%, JPN 6.3%, DEU 5.9%, FIN 2.0%). 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 85.6% 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.
Plastics: tableware and kitchenware(392410): you import 74.9% from China. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.39. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: TUR 3.0%, DEU 2.5%, USA 2.4%, S19 2.2%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Tableware and kitchenware: of porcelain or china(691110): you import 95.6% from China. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.43. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: DEU 5.8%, FRA 3.4%, TUR 2.5%, JPN 2.1%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Medicaments: containing alkaloids or their derivatives: other than ephedrine, pseudoephedrine (INN) or norephedrine or their salts: for therapeutic or prophylactic uses, packaged for retail sale(300449): you import 99.2% from Indonesia. UNKNOWN World concentration unavailable for this product code.
Tricycles, scooters, pedal cars and similar wheeled toys: dolls' carriages: dolls: other toys: reduced-size (scale) models and similar recreational models, working or not: puzzles of all kinds(950300): you import 78.7% from China. UNKNOWN World concentration unavailable for this product code.
Fans: table, floor, wall, window, ceiling or roof fans, with a self-contained electric motor of an output not exceeding 125W(841451): you import 83.7% from China. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.61. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: MYS 3.7%, MEX 2.6%, S19 2.2%, USA 1.6%). Policy: stockpile, substitute the input, or invest in allied/domestic production.
Seats: n.e.s. in heading no. 9401, (excluding medical, surgical, dental, veterinary or barber furniture)(940180): you import 74.7% from China. STRUCTURAL Structural scarcity, world export HHI 0.37. Switching suppliers will not fix this; the world itself is concentrated (top alternatives: ITA 7.0%, DEU 5.3%, POL 2.8%, TUR 2.4%). 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 (85.6%) + price +15% over 12m.
GeoDep 2022, world shares latest BACI year, Pink Sheet 2026M04. No real-time signal is implied.
where Timor-Leste is exposed
Cranes: transporter, gantry and bridge cranes (842619): imports 100% from China. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Vegetable oils: palm oil and its fractions, other than crude, whether or not refined, but not chemically modified (151190): imports 86% from Indonesia. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Plastics: tableware and kitchenware (392410): imports 75% from China. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Tableware and kitchenware: of porcelain or china (691110): imports 96% from China. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
Medicaments: containing alkaloids or their derivatives: other than ephedrine, pseudoephedrine (INN) or norephedrine or their salts: for therapeutic or prophylactic uses, packaged for retail sale (300449): imports 99% from Indonesia. Ranked by import dependency (GeoDep 2022). Single-supplier concentration is the exposure. Model a supply shock →
where Timor-Leste could grow
Digital processing units: whether or not presented with the rest of a system, which may contain in the same housing one or two of the following: storage units, input units, output units (847191): proximity 0.01 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +3.24, world market $149.5bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Rubber: synthetic, acrylonitrile-butadiene rubber (NBR), latex, in primary forms or in plates, sheets or strip (400251): proximity 0.01 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +4.52, world market $1.0bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Machines and appliances: instruments or apparatus of chapter 90: parts and accessories n.e.s. in chapter 90 (903300): proximity 0.01 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +2.34, world market $3.2bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Mechano-therapy appliances: massage apparatus and psychological aptitude-testing apparatus (901910): proximity 0.02 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +1.47, world market $7.3bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →
Tools, interchangeable: (for machine or hand tools, whether or not power-operated), tools for drilling (other than rock) (820750): proximity 0.01 to current capabilities, complexity PCI +3.87, world market $4.7bn. Ranked by density × complexity (product space 2024). See product →