Friday, December 13, 2013

Aircraft imports take a nosedive

We have looked aircraft imports before and today’s release from the CSO of the Trade Statistics for September further highlight the drop in aircraft imports in 2013.

Aircraft Imports

Imports of large aircraft in the first nine months of 2012 were 51 units worth €2.2 billion.  In the same period in 2013 there have been 21 units imported worth €0.7 billion.  The most notable changes are the reductions in aircraft imported from Brazil and the United States (which were usefully explained in a comment to the previous post).

The impact of these large changes relative to 2012 is that the balance of trade will be improved and the level of investment (fixed capital formation) will be reduced.  The €1.5 billion reduction in aircraft investment will be a significant drag on the measure of “domestic demand” that will be published with next week’s quarterly national accounts but the impact on the ground will be negligible.

Of the large aircraft imported last year 29 units worth €1.6 billion were imported in the first three months.  This led to a significant spike in gross fixed capital formation in Q1 2012 in the Quarterly National Accounts that was reversed in Q2.

GFCF

As item 792.50 in the table above shows imports of spacecraft remain zero.  Maybe we don’t need any for the economy “to take off like a rocket”.

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