merrion street

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD, today (Wednesday) welcomed the latest external trade figures published by the CSO which showed:

• a 5% increase in seasonally-adjusted exports in November compared with October,
• a 9% annual increase in unadjusted exports compared with November 2010
• on both an actual and a seasonally adjusted basis, our exports for November were the second highest on record
• the trade surplus in November increased 16% to €4.31billion, its highest level ever
• a 4.3% increase in exports in the first 11 months of the year, compared to the same period in 2010

As well as headline figures for November, the statistics also provide detailed breakdown of exports for October which show that exports to key target countries Brazil, Russia, India and China all up in that month compared to October 2010.

Furthermore:

• exports of Food grew by 14% and of dairy products by a very impressive 28%,
• exports of Organic Chemicals increased by 11% and of Medical and Pharmaceutical products by 8%.

These figures follow last week’s Eurostat data showing that for the period January – October, 2011, Ireland had the joint second largest trade surplus in absolute terms in the EU, second only to Germany. It was notable that many of the larger countries had very significant deficits.   

Minister Bruton said:

“As I have said before, a strong export performance will be crucial to achieving the economic and jobs recovery we are all working so hard for.

“However in recent months we have seen several signs of deterioration in the global economy, particularly connected with problems in the Eurozone, and several commentators have suggested that our exports could suffer. In that context, today’s results, and the great resilience which our exports are showing in difficult circumstances, are encouraging.

“In the Government’s Action Plan for Jobs, we will be implementing a series of reforms to ensure that we can build on this strong and resilient performance to achieve even greater export growth and ensure that exports drive a sustainable jobs recovery in the economy”

Ends.