The last two years of the sample period shows a decline in trade flows, which coincides with a modest growth slowdown in the domestic economy. There is some question to what extent the lower aggregates are the result of incomplete reporting in the last one or two years. It is possible that not all firm-level information had been included in the database yet when we received the data files. A comparison with information from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators (WDI) suggests that some of the trade slowdown could be due to incomplete reporting. The ratio between the firm-aggregates and the WDI statistics declines somewhat from 2015 to 2016 for exports. However, for imports there is some divergence between the firm-level and WDI aggregates between 2014 and 2015, but the two measures converge again in the last year. The possibility of incomplete reporting is something to keep in mind when we look at evolutions over time, but there is no clear break in the last year that would make this an obvious problem.

# **2.2 GVC aggregates**

We next use the information in the EORA global supply chain database that includes a multi-region input-output table, to provide an overview of the GVC integration of the Rwandan economy at an aggregate level.<sup>6</sup> Van Biesebroeck and Mensah (2019) describes how the full table—which contains information for 190 countries over a 26 sector harmonized classification—can be collapsed to construct a country-specific input-output table for Rwanda that shows the interactions of its economy with eight regions in the world.

The left panel of Figure 2 illustrates that the agricultural sector of Rwanda operates rather independently from the rest of the world. The share of total output that consists of intermediates sourced within Rwanda itself and value added created in the agricultural sector is around 97%. This high fraction has not changed noticeably over time. It is not surprising that this share is high in agriculture, but this share for Rwanda is higher than for the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, where it fluctuated between 95% and 96.4% over the 1995-2015 period. The share for sub-Saharan Africa is already higher than in other regions of the world, which is a result of the importance of smallholders.

The corresponding share for the manufacturing sector, i.e. the sum of value added and domestically sourced intermediates, was 88% in 1995 and this declined by one percentage points by 2015. Again, the share for Rwanda is higher than for the whole sub-Saharan African region where it was approximately 85%.

The right panel of Figure 2 shows the most important regions in the world from where Rwandan manufacturing firms source their intermediates. The EU has become the most important region with an import share of 39%, while previously the most important origin was the rest-of-the-world (ROW) aggregate. Two regions/countries experienced an increasing share over time. In absolute terms, the other sub-Saharan countries saw the largest increase and in 2015 they provided a fifth of imported inputs. In relative terms, it is the rise of Chinese intermediate inputs that really stands out. This latter trend is shared by every single country on the continent and Rwanda is lagging slightly behind, sourcing only 4.5% of inputs from China, while the regional average is 6.2% in 2015.

> 6 This full EORA data is available online at http://worldmrio.com/

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