Origin of intermediate goods used by EU’s five largest import partners for the production of chemical and pharmaceutical products 2015

The coronavirus pandemic has also revealed the extensive multinational nature and complexity of medical product supply chains; intermediate goods that are used in final production are obtained from providers located in many more countries than import figures suggest. Figure 6 illustrates this feature in the chemical and pharmaceutical sector in 2015 (the last available year); it depicts the countries of origin of primary and manufactured intermediate goods used for producing final products by the EU’s five largest import partners (namely, China, Singapore, Switzerland, US, UK) in this sector. The results show that the geographic provision of intermediate goods is far more scattered than import figures suggest. Unreported calculations show, albeit to various degrees, that the domestic inputs of Singapore, Switzerland, the US and the UK are mainly in the form of services.