Enrique Fanjul (Real Instituto Elcano) | There has been a lot written lately about the role of the foreign sector as the driver of the Spanish economy’s recovery. There have also been some very interesting academic papers published, which provide us with more details of the new configuration of Spanish exports – with the implications this has for strategies both for the public sector and companies.

In this post, we are going to comment on two of these papers, published over the last few months in the ICE’s Economic Bulletin.This is an excellent publication with a long tradition. The first one is by Juan José Otamendi, “The transformation of Spain’s export sector over the last decade”. The second was prepared by the Subdirectorate General for the Research and Evaluation of Trade Policy Instruments and is entitled “The trend in foreign trade by the characteristics of companies)”. (Some of the figures we mention have been updated with recently published statistics.)

Both papers, published at the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, provide a wealth of information and analysis on how the map of Spanish exports is being transformed. Now we are going to comment on and complement some of their most significant aspects.

Advance in the global exports’ share

The good performance of the export sector is reflected in an increase in Spain’s share of world exports since 2012, reaching 1.81% in 2017. This is above our weighting in global GDP (1.64%).

…MORE