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EU-Australia Trade: Business As Usual?

  • February 25th, 2010
  • Posted by 7thmin

ships-reduced1.jpgEurope’s claim to first-partner status in Australia’s trading relations took a battering from the global financial crisis, but recent figures shown business relations remain very healthy.

The European Union delegation at Canberra this month (19.2.10) reported as follows:

“Preliminary monthly trade data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on 3 February revealed that the EU was Australia’s third largest merchandise trading partner in 2009 (after China and ASEAN), being its largest source of imports (19.7% of total Australian imports) and fourth largest market for exports (8.8%, after China, Japan and ASEAN).

“The EU accounted for $A56.8 billion (or 14.3%) of Australia’s total two-way merchandise trade in 2009, down 19.9% from the previous year, the substantial fall mirroring the decline in the value of Australia’s trade with its other major partners, including ASEAN, Japan and the United States.

“While EU-Australia trade was shown to be susceptible to the broader collapse in global trade flows in the wake of the global financial crisis, it can be seen from monthly figures that amid signs of recovery in their respective economies, the value of bilateral trade has again trended upwards over the second-half of 2009.

“The EU remains Australia’s largest trading partner in services, representing 19.0 per cent ($A20.9bn) of Australia’s total services trade in 2008-09 (July-June).”

Reference

European Union Delegation to Australia, Home, 19.2.10. http://www.delaus.ec.europa.eu/, (25.2.10).