merrion street

Minister Bruton today [Tuesday] welcomed the latest external merchandise trade statistics, which were released today (23 August) by the CSO. The preliminary €4.079 billion seasonally adjusted trade surplus in June is the highest ever surplus.

The Minister said:

 "I am delighted that the recent good news on the export front is continuing. It is indeed heartening to know that despite the turbulent international markets into which we are exporting, our exports are continuing to perform to an extremely high level. I have said repeatedly that my priorities are to; get our costs down, get credit to good businesses and to support the innovation and R&D agenda. These trade figures show what our entrepreneurs can achieve when the conditions are right and only encourage me further to pursue this agenda so that we can continue to support export-led growth and recovery".

He was commenting on the figures, which show that the value of exports in June 2011, at €8.343 billion, was up 5.6% when compared with June 2010. Ireland’s Merchandise Trade surplus in June was a very healthy €4.473 billion – the highest since June 2001. For the first six months of the year the trade surplus stands at €21.9 billion compared with €21.2 million in the first half of 2010 – an increase of 3.3% and despite the serious economic difficulties affecting the global economy. (Key points at end of this Release).

Merchandise exports  for the first six months of this year at €46.9 billion are up 6.1% compared to the first half of last year.

Detailed country specific data for the first five months of 2011, also published today, show healthy increases in exports to both key traditional markets and to the new high potential destinations, over the same period in 2010.

Exports to the United States increased by 11.8% to €9.08 billion. The importance of the U.S. market will be underpinned when Minister Bruton leads a trade mission there in mid September. Exports to the EU rose by 4.2% to €22.336 billion in the first five months of 2011. Within the EU there has been some very important export achievements to countries such as the Czech Republic where in the first five months of 2011 exports grew by 95% to €235 million and to Sweden by 25% to €345 million.

In addition, some high potential markets on which there has been a particular focus recently have shown very substantial growth over the same period, with exports to Brazil increasing by over 9% to €112 million and exports to India, (where the Minister led a trade mission earlier this year) growing by 30% to €83 million. Exports to South Korea increased by 5.3% to €141 million.

The Minister said

 "Exports to dynamic emerging economies and those of Asia show the benefits of helping exporters concentrate more on these markets. For example I expect growth in exports to South Korea will receive a major boost from the Free Trade Agreement with Korea that started on 1 July."

The Minister went on to say,

 "These are very welcome trends and show that Irish business is rising to the challenge of seeking out new markets and winning new business. These figures emphasise both the importance of trade to the economy and its potential to be a significant contributor to recovery."

The Minister also welcomed the fact that imports over the first five months had risen across a broad range of categories. Commenting on this aspect of the trade data the Minister said :

 "These show that businesses are increasing their purchases of raw materials and inputs, which dovetails with the signs of business recovery from the lower levels of economic activity over recent times".

Commenting on the data for important exporting sectors the Minister said :

 "The Government is devoting considerable effort to the food sector, which is so important for Irish owned firms. It is indeed heartening to see that food exports grew by over 19% to €3.151 billion, while key high technology exports in areas such as medical and pharmaceutical products grew at a very fast pace. We are strengthening our already leading position in that area’

The Minister also welcomed data released by EUROSTAT, the EU statistics body last week, which showed that Ireland had the third largest Trade surplus of the 27 Member States for the five months January – May 2011 (after Germany and the Netherlands). It was notable that many of the larger countries had very significant deficits. In addition, the EUROSTAT data showed that Ireland’s contribution to the EU’s total exports to other countries increased by 20% in June last, over the previous month.