Minister Kelleher comments on the latest Merchandise trade figures

The Minister for Trade and Commerce, Mr. Billy Kelleher, T.D., commented on the latest trade statistics published by the Central Statistics Office today. While acknowledging that the provisional figures for August 2009 were down on the same month last year, the newly published complete data for the first seven months of this year show that exports were up by 2% on January – July 2008.

There were significant increases in exports of medical and pharmaceutical products and organic chemicals. In addition, sales to the US were up 16% despite the deteriorating exchange rate between the Euro and the US dollar. Reflecting the continued drive to maintain our Euro area exports, our exports to Belgium and Spain increased significantly.

The significant reduction in imports was especially pronounced in discretionary consumer spending sectors such as motor vehicles and computers and the fall in imports for the year to date, has meant our trade surplus has risen to a very impressive €24 billion for the January-July 2009 period, compared to €15 billion for the same period in 2008 - a 58% increase.

The Minister also welcomed the latest data from the EU’s EUROSTAT agency, which shows Ireland has the second largest trade surplus of the EU Member States for the first seven months of 2009. It is significant that some of the larger economies, such as the UK, France and Spain have very significant trade deficits. The EUROSTAT data also shows that Ireland is the only one of the 27 member states to have positive export growth in the period January-July 2009 when compared to the same period in 2008. In most other Member States, exports fell by over 20%.

Given this overall positive trend, the Minister said “Irish exports continue to be a key factor in contributing to our future economic recovery and the work of my Department and its industrial development agencies will continue to focus on the importance of our exports as a driver to develop our economy. Their focus will not only be on our well established markets such as Canada, where the Tánaiste is leading a trade mission this week, but also the new and emerging countries such as South Africa where I headed a trade mission in September last and the United Arab Emirates which I will be targeting next month”.

The Minister concluded by saying “this focus on trade success will greatly assist in overcoming the wider and very challenging economic climate ahead”.