Destination Unspecified: Suriname's Gold Exports in Partner-Country Trade Statistics, 2019–2025.

Institut Atlantique Sud Research Note No. 1. Mirror statistics confront what an exporting country declares with what its trading partners declare having received. Applied to Suriname's gold exports (HS 7108) over 2019–2025, using primary UN Comtrade records, they show three things. First, from 2023 Suriname's reported gold exports carry no destination: the entire value is recorded against an unspecified partner, and in 2023 and 2025 a further 32% and 46% of chapter 71 export value is not allocated to any heading. Second, the two sets of declarations agree closely in 2021–2022, when partner-reported net weight is 0.98–1.00 times Suriname-reported net weight; this period calibrates the method. Third, in each of the other five years partner-reported imports exceed Suriname-reported exports on at least one bound, and on both bounds in four of them (2019, 2020, 2023, 2024). In 2024 the excess reaches at least 1.31 times by weight, and a single importing country reports more gold from Suriname than Suriname reports exporting to the world. The United Arab Emirates remained a destination at least through 2023 but had not reported 2024–2025 data at the time of extraction. The note documents a statistical discrepancy between official declarations; it does not attribute it to any actor. Data, code and query hashes: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22898406