Statistics Committee

The three over-riding policy principles governing IMnI’s Statistics are vertical information flow, anonymity and aggregation (by the rule of 3), this last to be implemented when applicable.

All statistical data submitted by members to the IMnI remains confidential in the hands of the IMnI staff, and under no circumstances shall be passed on to any third party, including other IMnI members. Nor shall such data be published or distributed by the IMnI in any form which could identify the origin or originator of the data, with the exception of the Market Research Report, which only shows country-by-country data with a time-lag of 6 months for countries with less than 3 producers.

No written or oral commentary shall be provided by the IMnI staff on any such submitted data to any third party, including IMnI members. No data shall be reviewed or commented on by any IMnI Committee or Committee member unless such data has first been aggregated and rendered anonymous in accordance with these Policy guidelines.

The IMnI staff shall refuse to answer any questions or enquiries from members regarding data submitted by any member other than to respond to questions asked by a specific member regarding that member’s own submitted data return and only with a view to rectifying errors or correcting omissions in respect thereof.

All data submitted by members shall be held in electronic form only accessible by the IMnI secretariat. No copies of this information, in any form whatsoever, shall be passed on to any third party, including members of IMnI, by the IMnI staff.

IMnI’s Monthly Market Research Report on Mn Ore (wet and Mn content) & Alloys shall include monthly and yearly figures by country and region for production, consumption (real and apparent), capacities, and inventories:

• Trade Data (publicly available country information – no aggregation)
• Real Consumption
• Apparent Consumption
• Capacity and Capacity Utilization
• Production and Supply-Demand Balance
• Unit consumption

Ordinary members shall provide the IMnI with their production and inventory figures, directly on the IMnI extranet on a monthly basis. No member shall provide, nor be requested to provide, this information to any other member or indeed to any other party.

Production, Inventory and Capacity Analysis

The IMnI staff will research available industry publications and other sources to verify production and capacity figures. Other international organizations and government agencies also contribute to the service, notably the Indian Bureau of Mines: these same guidelines and resultant protocols shall be applied in respect of the participation to those organizations and agencies accordingly.

Consumption Analysis

The IMnI Staff will analyse publicly available trade data and public steel production data to calculate apparent and real consumption for every country covered by the IMnI Market Research Report.

Trade Data Analysis

Publicly available trade data will be examined and placed into a matrix report format. Since this information is publicly available and does not come from members, no aggregation is necessary.

In order to aggregate and render anonymous submitted data in accordance with an aggregation rule of 3, the Monthly Report shall show production statistics with a time-lag of 1 month for regions with more than 3 active producing companies, 3 months for countries with more than 3 producers, and 6-month for regions and countries with less than 3 producers.