January 27, 2012
Patrick Artus, the chief economist at Natixis, was telling me how Spanish exports were booming so I thought it was worth looking up the data. With austerity on the menu in many countries, the hope is that export growth can compensate for sluggish domestic demand. Of course, since the biggest export market for many European nations is other EU nations, this might seem a lost cause. But at least, there was a general export increase last year.
Top marks to Estonia. The performance of Greece may seem surprising given that it has a huge current account deficit. My colleague who is just back from the country tells me Greek tourism has been doing well, in part because of the political turmoil in Egypt, a rival destination and in part because Israelis are heading for Greece rather than Turkey. Malta and Cyprus may be benefiting from similar effects.
Spain is doing very well on this score and a lot better than France. Ireland's bottom ranking is misleading; it had an export boom rather earlier than the rest and has recorded current account surpluses in three of the last five quarters.
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