Greek exports jump, swell eurozone trade surplus
Exports from Greece and Portugal, where years of credit-fuelled imports saddled the countries with huge debts, grew strongly in the first eight months of this year and lifted the eurozone’s trade surplus, in a sign of hope for southern Europe.
The 17 countries sharing the euro posted a 9.8 billion euro trade surplus with the rest of the world in September, more than five times the level in the same month a year ago, the EU’s statistics office Eurostat said on Friday.
Exports are one of the few sources of growth in the eurozone, which slipped into recession in the third quarter, and that is evident in the indebted countries of southern Europe.
Despite recession in Italy, Spain and Portugal and a depression in Greece, all four increased their exports in the January-to-August period, year-on-year, while imports fell.
That signals a reshaping of their economies, particularly for Portugal and Greece, which have been bailed out by the eurozone and the International Monetary Fund.
After a decade of imports and consumption with borrowed money, the countries are exporting again.
Exports from Greece rose 11 percent in the first eight months of the year and imports fell 13 percent. In Portugal, exports rose 10 percent while imports slid 5 percent.
Adjusted for seasonal factors, Greece’s exports grew 9.7 percent in September this year from August, the biggest jump of all the countries in the currency bloc.
Germany accounts for more than half of all the euro zone’s exports and its foreign sales rose 5 percent in the January-to-August period, on a non-seasonally adjusted basis.
However, the weakness of imports in the much larger German and French economies points to falling domestic demand as the eurozone sinks into the recession brought on by the sovereign debt crisis.
Imports grew just 2 percent in Germany in the first eight months of the year, according to the data that was not adjusted for seasonal swings. In France imports were up only 3 percent.
[Reuters]
