• Héctor Gómez: “The foreign sector is one of the engines of our economy and the competitiveness of Spanish companies in international markets stands out for quality and innovation.” • The trade deficit fell by about half to 16.42 billion euros in the first half compared to 31.963 in the same period last year. • The non-energy balance yielded a surplus of 285 million euros.
Spanish exports reach their historical peak and grow by 4.7% in the first six months of 2023
17/08/2023
Monthly foreign trade report
August 17, 2023.- Spanish merchandise exports have reached their historical peak and increased by 4.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2023, reaching 199,951 million euros.
Imports, for their part, have fallen by 2.9%, to 216.372 billion euros. As a result, the trade deficit of the first six months of the year has been reduced by almost half (48.6%), to 16.42 billion euros, since the deficit of 31.963 billion registered in the same period of 2022.
The coverage rate – export/import ratio – increased to 92.4% (85.7% in January-June 2022, provisional data).
This is shown in the latest Monthly Foreign Trade Report of the Secretary of State for Trade with declared Customs trade data.
For the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Héctor Gómez, “these data show that the foreign sector is one of the engines of our economy and that the competitiveness of Spanish companies in international markets highlights quality and constant innovation”.
Surplus of non-energy balance
The non-energy balance yielded a surplus of 285 million euros, compared to the deficit of 6,069 million euros in the accumulated until June 2022, and the energy deficit reached 16,705 million euros, lower than the deficit of 25,894 million euros in the same period of 2022.
In addition, Gómez stressed that “the solidity of Spanish exporting companies makes exports more dynamic than imports”. “This has allowed us to reduce the trade deficit by half and to have a non-energy surplus in the cumulative of the first six months of the year. On the other hand, this Government welcomes the fact that Spanish exports continue to grow above those of our main trading partners,” the minister stressed.
The main positive contributions to the annual rate of change of exports from January to June 2023 came from the automotive sector (3.2 points contribution), capital goods (2.8 points contribution), food, beverages and tobacco (1.2 points contribution) and chemicals (0.4 points contribution).
With regard to imports, the sectors that contributed positively to the year-on-year variation rate in the first half were: automotive sector (contribution of 2.4 points), capital goods (contribution of 2.0 points), food, beverages and tobacco (contribution of 1.2 points) and other goods (contribution of 0.1 points).
Exports to the European Union (63.3% of the total) amounted to 6.3% year-on-year in the first six months of the year. Sales to the euro zone (55.4% of the total) rose by 5.6% and those destined for the rest of the European Union (7.9% of the total), grew by 11.5%. Sales to third destinations (36.7% of the total) increased by 2.1% in this period, with increases in exports to Latin America (21.2%) and Oceania (17.7%) and decreases to Africa (-7.6%), the Middle East (-6.4%), Asia excluding the Middle East (-2.4%) and North America (-0.6%).
The autonomous communities with the highest growth in their exports were Castilla y León (16.3%), Catalonia (14.5%) and La Rioja (12.6%).
The full report and the methodological note can be consulted at this web address within the Trade Portal.