Foreign intrigue.

• Author: Stapleton, Sid
• Position: Exports in North Carolina

When it comes to exports, even the experts aren't exactly sure who's sending what where.

Exports are big business in North Carolina, but it's tough figuring out just how big. Ask John Dutton, an associate professor of business management at N.C. State University's College of Management. He compiles the quarterly Wachovia North Carolina World Trade Index.

In 1995, he reports, North Carolina companies exported $16.7 billion of Tar Heel-made products. That's up 22% from a year earlier and ranks the state 10th in the nation. Those numbers are fairly reliable, he says, but it's a convoluted process to get there.

First of all, no North Carolina government agency keeps an exports scorecard. All the estimates available are based on data from computer tapes published by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which are actually compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, which in turn gets its information from the shipper's export-declaration forms that companies complete for the U.S. Customs Service. Responses on the forms are often vague - and sometimes missing.

If coming up with aggregate figures on North Carolina's exports involves processes faintly reminiscent of casting bones and reading the entrails of recently deceased animals, constructing a definitive list of which companies are exporting how much of what to where is like taking a plunge into a black hole. Even the N.C. Department of Commerce's International Trade Division doesn't have such a list. "Yes, it's frustrating not to have that kind of information," says the division's director, William T. King. "But the information belongs to the companies, and if they don't want to give it to us, they don't have to."

The difficulty of prying export information from companies became clear to Arthur Andersen when it set out, in conjunction with BUSINESS NORTH CAROLINA, to compile the first-ever ranking of the state's largest exporters. The Charlotte office of the international accounting and consulting firm mailed confidential questionnaires to more than 1,500 North Carolina-based companies and subsidiaries.

The response was about the same as to surveys by the International Trade Division. Of 1,566 companies contacted, 62 replied. The low return rate was partly because many companies had never gotten such a request before. But follow-up inquiries frequently generated this response: "We do not release information on our exports." As a result, many big exporters are missing from the list - companies such as R.J...