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It seems too ridiculous to be true but here at the margins of the EU Summit, European leaders are actually claiming that their strategy is working: Never mind the fact that the European economy is back in recession and that unemployment is sky rocketing, the recovery of export dynamics in some member states is seen as a measure of great success by our ‘very serious leaders’.
It seems too ridiculous to be true but here at the margins of the EU Summit, European leaders are actually claiming that their strategy is working: Never mind the fact that the European economy is back in recession and that unemployment is sky rocketing, the recovery of export dynamics in some member states is seen as a measure of great success by our ‘very serious leaders’.
In particular, much is being made of the
fact that exports statistics from Greece indicate a substantial increase
since 2009. This is supposed to demonstrate the benefits of the
‘internal devaluation’ policy imposed by the Troika with wages and unit
wage costs collapsing. It’s therefore interesting to examine Greece
export figures in greater detail.
First, when looking at the volume of goods
exports and basing ourselves on the AMECO database, there’s hardly any
sign of this famously strong recovery of Greek exports. In 2008, Greece
was exporting some 22 billion worth of goods (in prices of 2005). The
volume of goods exports collapsed to 19 billion in the 2009 financial
crisis and has recovered slowly to 21 billion in 2012. No export miracle
here.
Something does seem to be happening when switching the focus to goods exports in current prices. These increased from 22 billion before the outbreak of the crisis to 26, 5 billion in 2012, representing an expansion of 20%.
To examine what is behind this surge in the
statistics, the figure below shows the product composition of exports
from Greece from 1999 to countries outside the EU-27. (We also produced a
figure on Greek exports to the EU 27 but all the curbs were flat).
This chart indicates that one product group
above all was responsible for this increase in goods exports, namely
the group ‘mineral fuels, lubricants and related materials’, which made a
sudden leap to 6 times its previous level, increasing by €5 billion, an
amount corresponding to the overall increase of goods exports from
Greece (see paragraph above).
This is a bizarre finding, for two reasons.
What is striking about this particular group is that it mainly contains
products that are highly capital – and material – intensive (coal,
petroleum, gas, electric current). Labour cost cuts are therefore the least likely
explanation for this sudden surge in exports. Moreover, the surge in
exports of this product group from Greece is limited to the rest of the
world. There is no increase in these exports to European markets.
An explanation for this riddle can be found
in a note from the Greek statistical office, the Hellenic Statistical
Authority, Press release, ‘Commercial transactions of Greece
(Estimations: August 2012’, October 10th). The note says the
following: “Data on trade in petroleum products are not included due to a
revision under way of the respective time series. The revision aims to
incorporate revised primary data that have been recently provided by the
Customs Authority”.
In other words, what may very well be
responsible for much or this entire surge in Greek exports are ‘revised
primary data’, i.e. simply a difference in counting.
To conclude, if the wage austerians are now
basing their case on statistical corrections instead on hard data, they
must be getting pretty desperate.
http://www.social-europe.eu/2012/10/european-wage-austerians-are-getting-desperate-what-really-happened-with-greek-exports/
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