Granite State exports climb for a fifth month in a row

Following monthly gains of 2.1 percent in June, exports from New Hampshire rose by 2.4 percent in July – the fifth consecutive monthly increase in foreign sales, resulting in the best showing in more than four years. All told, foreign buyers spent $217.5 million to buy goods made in the Granite State.

On an annual basis, New Hampshire’s exporting companies surpassed their performance in comparison to a year ago. In July of this year, state exporters sold $25.2 million, or 13.1 percent, more goods overseas than in July of last year.

Nationally, U.S. exports of goods, seasonally adjusted, increased by 0.5 percent to a record $74.9 billion in July. The latest rise in national exports to their highest level in history reflected increases in foreign sales of major groups of manufactured goods like consumer goods, capital goods and auto vehicles, parts and engines.

New Hampshire’s manufacturing companies again played an important part in the state’s export performance as their sales abroad accounted for 83 percent of all state exports in July. Foreign consumers and producers bought $181.1 million worth of manufactured goods made in New Hampshire in July, adjusted for seasonal variation — 3.7 percent more than in the previous month.

July exports of manufactured goods hit the highest level since July 2001.

Exports of non-manufactured goods went down 3.5 percent in July to $36.4 million, adjusted for seasonal variation. This group of New Hampshire’s foreign sales consists of agricultural goods, mining products and re-exports, which are foreign goods that entered the state as imports and are exported in substantially the same condition as when imported.

Increased globalization of New Hampshire’s manufacturing companies generates not only jobs in the exporting plants but also results in spillover job creation in other manufacturing industries as well as non-manufacturing industries which all contribute to the final preparation of the goods shipped abroad.

July’s exports of manufactured goods supported 18,800 manufacturing jobs in New Hampshire. More important, exporting activity in manufacturing companies has triggered significant ripple effects in other industries.

A total of 19,400 additional state jobs in wholesale and retail trade, transportation, business services, and to a lesser degree utilities, mining and agriculture, were linked to exports of manufactured goods in July.

So far this year, U.S. exports of goods have soared by 11 percent, compared with a jump of 13.2 percent in 2004 and a moderate rise of 4.5 percent in 2003. U.S. exports have hit an all-time high in five out of the first seven months in 2005.

In comparison to the same period of 2004, overseas sales from New Hampshire’s companies – seasonally adjusted – increased by an annual rate of 9.9 percent, compared with an 11 percent average growth for the nation as a whole.

The international economic outlook is expected to improve at the end of this year and in the beginning of 2006, according to the World Economic Survey conducted by the German Ifo Institute and the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce.

About 1,100 executives from 95 countries indicated that although the world economic climate did not improve for a fifth consecutive quarter, it has still remained at a high level. The recent findings are consistent with a growing global economy which slows down to its long-term growth performance following a strong upswing after the 2001 recession.

The international executives expect economic conditions in their countries during the next two quarters to be better than current conditions prevailing in the third quarter of 2005. The experts also expect both exports from and imports to their countries to increase in the next two quarters, compared to the current trends during the third quarter of 2005.

The favorable global economic outlook will result in a continuous increase in New Hampshire’s exports in the rest of this year and in the first half of 2006.

Evangelos Simos, chief economist of the consulting and research firm Infometrica Inc., is editor of international affairs for the Journal of Business Forecasting and professor and department chair at the University of New Hampshire. He may be reached at eosimos@infometrica.com. Distributed by Infometrica Inc.