Countertrade means exchanging goods or services which are paid for, in whole or in part, with other goods or services, rather than with money. A monetary valuation can however be used in countertrade for accounting purposes. In dealings between sovereign states, the term bilateral trade is used. Types of countertrade There are six main variants of countertrade: Barter: Exchange of goods or services directly for other goods or services without the use of money as means of purchase or payment. Barter is the direct exchange of goods between two parties in a transaction. The principal exports are paid for with goods or services supplied from the importing market. A single contract covers both flows, in its simplest form involves no cash. In practice, supply of the principal exports is often held up until sufficient revenues have been earned from the sale of bartered goods. One of the largest barter deals to date involved Occidental Petroleum Corporation's agreement to ship sulphuric acid to the former Soviet Union for ammonia urea and potash under a 2 year deal which was worth 18 billion euros. Furthermore, during negotiation stage of a barter deal, the seller must know the market price for items offered in trade. Bartered goods can range from hams to iron pellets, mineral water, furniture or olive-oil all somewhat more difficult to price and market when potential customers must be sought. Switch trading: Practice in which one company sells to another its obligation to make a purchase in a given country. Counterpurchase: The sale of goods and services to a company in another country by a company that promises to make a future purchase of a specific product from the same company in that country. Buyback: occurs when a firm builds a plant in a country, or supplies technology, equipment, training, or other services to the country, and agrees to take a certain percentage of the plant's output as partial payment for the contract. Offset: Agreement that a company will offset a hard-currency purchase of an unspecified product from that nation in the future. Agreement by one nation to buy a product from another, subject to the purchase of some or all of the components and raw materials from the buyer of the finished product, or the assembly of such product in the buyer nation. Compensation trade: Compensation trade is a form of barter in which one of the flows is