WITH THIRD-QUARTER economic figures out, now is a good time to play with the numbers on exports. A little juggling of the data produces some interesting results.
First juggle is with re-exports. They are big, accounting for 74 per cent of total merchandise exports but most of this is just pass through and, dollar for dollar, they obviously do not do as much as our domestic exports.
As a rough estimate of what they do we shall take the re-export margin, the amount added here over the cost at which they come here. That figure has steadily risen over the years and, although I do not have the latest data, we shall assume a figure of 21.5 per cent at present.
It is still a cheat of course. Re-export implies that there is some real value added, traditionally packaging or finishing work, but most of that margin for us is now just a booking dodge to get around paying profits taxes across the border. I have no better figure, however, and so we shall take it. The top line at the right side of the chart represents that re-export margin in annual US dollar terms (if you talk trade, talk the currency of trade).
The next line down represents service exports with one twist. The travel component comes out of it. We are trying to get a measure of trade here, not tourism. This takes about a 20 per cent chop out of service exports and what remains is two-thirds related to trade in some form with the rest being banking, insurance and miscellaneous services.
The bottom line gives you domestic exports, more than half of it now garments and other facets of the rag trade, a doomed industrial base for us once garment quotas vanish from international trade. I believe this is meant to happen in 2005 but count on that date to slide again.
