The automotive industry has lost strength in Spanish exports in the period from 2016 to 2021. According to a report by CaixaBank Research, the weight of the sector has been reduced by three percentage points. It represents 12.5% ??of all exports and is one of the six large sectors open to foreigners in Spain.
Despite the loss of weight, it is still the second most important, behind wholesale trade, as can be seen in the graph (with 24.6%). The other four sectors with a relevant weight are food, chemistry, metallurgy and storage and transportation. Precisely this last area (logistics) is the one that has increased its contribution to exports the most: 1.6 percentage points.
Between 2016 and 2021, foreign sales of Spanish companies increased by 20%. Catalonia is the main exporting community in Spain, with around a quarter. The majority of the sectors analyzed (78%) experienced an increase in foreign sales during the period. The increase in sales – the report details – corresponds both to an expansion of the export base by country and to an increase in sectors. Exports to non-EU markets increased by 36% compared to 10% in European Union markets.
The work also analyzes the “export intensity”, which measures sales abroad with respect to the total turnover of each company. In that case, the export intensity of all sectors decreased by 3 percentage points between 2016 and 2021. CaixaBank Research clarifies that “this reduction has been mainly due to the fall in the export intensity of the manufacturing and extractive industry, which has a high weight in exports.” On the other hand, other smaller sectors considerably increased their intensity, such as beverage manufacturing (more than 9 percentage points) and cinematographic activities (4).
The work maintains that companies in sectors with greater export intensity invest more and create more quality employment because they have a greater part of the workforce employed indefinitely. Additionally, the sectors with greater export intensity have, on average, a much greater number of large companies.
