Record first semester in Spanish commerce, but with a negative final stretch. Exports marked a record high until June with an increase of 4.7%, up to 199,951.2 million euros, according to data published this Thursday by the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism. The rebound in the automobile sector largely explains the improvement, in which Catalonia is key. Imports, for their part, fell by 2.9%, to 216,372 million.
If you look only at June, the picture changes. Exports fell 2.8% for the first time since the pandemic and imports fell 9.9%, triggering alerts for a slowdown in a less buoyant international context. This is due to the change in trend in the export of energy products, which fell by 41%, and lower sales to European partners (-2%).
Just a year ago energy and raw material prices were skyrocketing after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. The normalization of its costs and a greater increase in exports make it possible to reduce the trade deficit, the difference between what is sold abroad and what is imported, to 16,420 million euros, 48.6% less. If in 2022 the energy deficit escalated to 25,900 million, today it is 16,700 million.
Spain’s exports grew more than those of Germany, Italy, China or the US, but less than France (6.9%) or the United Kingdom (8.7%). “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 emphasizes quality and constant innovation”, said the Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Héctor Gómez. . The automobile is the one that contributes the most to the growth of exports, with 3.2 points, compared to 2.8 for capital goods and 1.2 for food, beverages and tobacco.
The main destination are countries of the European Union, with 63% of the total and a rise of 6.3%. The growth of 12% in Germany and Italy or 6% in France stands out.
In the rest of the planet they increased by 2.1%, but with uneven variations. For example, it is growing strongly in Latin America (21% to 10,740 million) or Oceania (18%, with 1,117 million). They fell in turn in Africa (-7.6%), the Middle East (-6.4%), the rest of Asia (-2.4%) and North America (-0.6%), with a decrease both in the US and Canada.
With June already reflecting a drop in trade, the slowdown in China, the doubts with Germany or the impact of the rise in rates on families and companies call for caution. “We are in a slowdown phase, in all sectors except the automobile (sales rose 31% in June). We must be calm but attentive, while continuing to monitor geopolitical conflicts, which are increasingly affecting commercial relations”, explains Joan Tristany, general director of the association of industrial companies Amec.
From Amec they point out that geopolitics each time has a more relevant weight in the exchanges. For example, while exports to Africa fell by 7.5%, they grew by 5.4% to Morocco and fell by 90% to Algeria, something that is attributed to positioning on Western Sahara and that “is causing loss of customers”. In the case of sales to Russia, they fell by 39%, to 437 million euros.
In the case of Catalonia, exports advanced three times the national average (14.5%), only surpassed by the increase in Castilla y León. Sales rose to 53,217.4 million euros thanks to the recovery of automobile exports -representing 8.1 points of the rise-. The engine has gone from being a heavy drop to being a key piece of stat boosting.
“Catalonia was the community with the greatest positive contribution to the variation in exports,” the ministry report states. Almost 27 out of every 100 euros that leave Spain do so from this autonomy, the main point of departure. One third are chemical products, followed by automotive and capital goods. Chemicals are at the same time the most imported, which as a whole advance by 4.2%. The commercial balance falls in half, from negative 8,900 million last year to a hole of 4,478 million this.
In June, while there were falls at the national level, Catalan exports increased by 12%. For the Minister of Business and Labor, Roger Torrent, the figures show that “going abroad is a structural commitment of the Catalan productive fabric”.
