IRELAND’S EXPORTS exceeded €40 billion in the April-June period, a record figure for a single quarter topping the previous high mark reached in the final three months of 2008.
The Central Statistics Offices’s figures on the State’s balance of international payments, released yesterday, show that receipts accruing to companies in Ireland from sales of goods and services to foreigners both rose in the second quarter.
From their recessionary trough in the third quarter of 2009 (see chart 3 above), receipts earned from exports of goods and services combined were up by more than 14 per cent by the second quarter of 2010.
Yesterday’s balance of payments figures are the only regular source of information on Ireland’s ever more important internationally traded services sector.
In the second quarter, businesses located in Ireland sold services worth €18.3 billion to foreign customers. This represents an increase of just under 10 per cent on the previous three months and is the highest quarterly figure recorded.
A decade ago, in the second quarter of 2000, the value of services exports stood at just €5.7 billion. Most of the 3½-fold growth since then was registered in the period up to 2007.
As chart 3 illustrates, growth for most of the period since has been dampened by the global recession. However, yesterday’s figures suggest that rapid rates of growth recorded in the decade to 2007 may be resuming.
A breakdown of the figures shows that growth was broad-based, with seven of the eight categories of services exports registering growth on the previous quarter.
Computer services, which are the largest single services export, accounted for 40 per cent of the total in the second quarter. Receipts stood at €7.2 billion, up more than 14 per cent quarter on quarter, to reach a new record.
The second largest category is business services. There includes logistics, leasing and consultancy, often provided by subsidiaries of foreign multinationals to their sister companies elsewhere.
Receipts for exports of business services stood at €5.3 billion in the second quarter, a 4.3 per cent increase on the quarter.
Insurance and financial services exports are the third and fourth largest services exports. Both have been badly affected by the global financial crisis.
Insurance exports continued to contract in the second quarter and, at €1.9 billion, were almost one-fifth below their peak in early 2007.
Financial services exports grew in the second quarter, but at €1.5 billion were more than one-fifth below their previous high, recorded in late 2007.
The fifth largest source of services exports receipts is tourism. This highly seasonal industry had its worst April-June period in nine years, earning just €845 million. This was down 17 per cent on the same period in 2009.
Ireland-based companies sold goods worth €21.8 billion to the rest of world in the second quarter of 2010. This was 6.2 per cent higher than in the first quarter and the highest since 2008 (see Chart 3).
The balance of payments numbers measure cash receipts for goods (and services) sold to foreigners.
They are raw data, adjusted for neither inflation nor seasonal factors and differ from those cited elsewhere on this page, which come from the national accounts.
