Spanish exports grew by 3.3% until July

Spanish merchandise exports increased by 3.3% year-on-year in the January-July period and reached 230 billion euro, a historical maximum.

For their part, imports decreased by 3.7% to 251 billion euro, as shown in the Monthly Foreign Trade Report for July 2023 from the Secretary of State for Commerce with data on declared trade from Customs.

As a result, the trade deficit for the first seven months of the year fell to 21,3 billion euro (deficit of 38,5 billion recorded in the same period of 2022).

For the acting Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Héctor Gómez: “International trade is a tool for global progress and this Government is committed to strengthening multilateralism, demanding a trade policy open to our main partners, both European and transnational. It safeguards of free trade and the intensification of commercial cooperation are two of the priorities of the Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU, and thus we have had the opportunity to defend it before the European Parliament this week.

“Spain offers legal security and great investment opportunities in an environment of economic growth and contained inflation that favours the creation of wealth,” Gómez recalled.

The year-on-year increase in Spanish exports between January and July (3.3%) was higher than that recorded in the EU-27 (1.8%) and the euro zone (1.2%). Also registered in Germany (2.7%) and Italy (2.3%). Outside the EU, sales from the United Kingdom (6.1%), China (1.5%) and Japan (2.6%) also grew, while those from the US fell (-2.0 %).

The main positive contributions to the annual variation rate of exports from January to July 2023 came from the automotive sector (contribution of 3.3 points), capital goods (contribution of 2.3 points), food, beverages and tobacco (contribution of 1.1 points) and chemicals (contribution of 0.3 points).

“The automobile, capital goods and food sectors have led Spanish exports in these seven months and registered year-on-year growth of 29.4%, 13.2% and 6.4% respectively,” explains Héctor Gómez, who recalled that “after the pandemic and the logistical effort of vaccination, 2022 was the year of economic reactivation and this 2023, as the recent GDP review carried out by the INE has shown, that of economic growth. A growth “economically sustained largely by that commercial openness and that investment hunger that places Spain as a safe, robust and attractive country for the foreign sector.”

Exports to the European Union (63.1% of the total) increased by 4.8% year-on-year in the first seven months of the year. Sales to the euro zone (55.2% of the total) grew by 4.0% and those to the rest of the European Union (7.9% of the total) rose by 10.3%. Exports to third destinations (36.9% of the total) increased by 1.0% in this period, with increases in exports to Latin America (19.6%) and Oceania (11.8%).

The autonomous communities with the greatest growth in their exports were Castilla y León, Catalonia and La Rioja.

In the month of July, Spanish merchandise exports decreased by 5% year-on-year to 30,4 billion euro. For their part, imports also decreased by 8.4% in year-on-year terms to 35,3 billion euro. Compared to the previous month, with the series seasonally adjusted and corrected for the calendar effect, exports decreased by 1.7%, while imports grew by 3.0%.

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