Minister Ahern welcomes increase in exports in 2005

The Minister for Trade and Commerce, Mr. Michael Ahern, T,D., today welcomed the trade statistics released by the CSO. The final figures for the year 2005 show that merchandise exports for that year increased by 5% over 2004 to €88.4 billion. Imports for the year rose by 11% to €56.4 billion but this was largely influenced by a significant increase in fuel prices resulting in a trade surplus of €32 billion.

Minister Ahern expressed his satisfaction with the figures for last year. He particularly welcomed the fact that significant increases in exports were achieved in the Pharmaceutical and Computer equipment sectors which shows that Ireland is able to compete very strongly in products where we face significant international competition. In addition, he noted that we achieved significant increases to some of our traditional EU markets such as France, the Netherlands, Spain and Denmark while also expanding our trade with many of the new accession countries. Significantly, we achieved significant growth in exports to some of the key emerging markets in Asia such as China, India and Malaysia. "This builds on our work in implementing our `Asia Strategy' to improve trade and related links with the major Asian economies" the Minister stated.

"This reflects a long running trend of diversifying our markets. Great Britain, which for many years was our dominant market for exports, is now in second place after the USA, followed closely by Belgium in third place," Minister Ahern added.

The CSO also issued preliminary trade figure for January 2006 and the early trends for this year are also very buoyant. The Minister welcomed the fact that exports increased by 11% compared with January 2005 while imports increased by about 12% (again with increased fuel costs over the year, a significant factor).

ENDS

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