Exports from Ocean State fall in February

FROM JANUARY TO FEBRUARY, exports from Rhode Island manufacturers dropped 15.4 percent, according to e-forecasting.com. / COURTESY E-FORECASTING.COM
FROM JANUARY TO FEBRUARY, exports from Rhode Island manufacturers dropped 15.4 percent, according to e-forecasting.com. / COURTESY E-FORECASTING.COM

PROVIDENCE – Exports from the Ocean State fell 15.4 percent in February to $192.9 million on a month-to-month, seasonally adjusted basis after rising 19.3 percent in January, according to an international trade statistics report from e-forecasting.com.
Overseas shipments from Rhode Island manufacturers, which accounted for 65 percent of the month’s exports, decreased 7.5 percent from January to February to $126.1 million, seasonally adjusted.
Exports of non-manufactured goods totaled $66.9 million in February, a 27 percent decrease from the $91.7 million shipped in January. Non-manufactured goods include agricultural goods, mining products and re-exports, which are foreign goods that entered the state as imports and are exported in the same condition.
Year over year in February, total exports from Rhode Island fell 26 percent from the $260.7 million reported during February 2012. For the state’s manufactures, exports dropped 12.8 percent to $126.1 million from the $144.6 million reported during February last year.

Nationally, exports rose 3.1 percent to $132.2 billion from February 2012 to February 2013.
Year over year, for the first two months of 2013, Rhode Island’s exporters sold 4.6 percent less than they did during the first two months of 2012, as overall exports from the U.S. increased 2.8 percent year over year, according to the report.
Nationally, Rhode Island ranked 37th in export growth among the 50 states for the first two months of the year.
“The monthly numbers for 2013 indicate that American foreign sales continue to grow but at a slower pace than in 2012 amid flagging output and high unemployment in the industrial countries which reduced their foreign purchases,” e-forecasting.com Chief Economist Evangelos Otto Simos said in a report analyzing the export statistics.
Simos said that Rhode Island companies will likely receive bigger export orders from foreign buyers during 2013, but that the increases will not be as good as in previous economic recoveries. Simos added that predictions suggest that there will be better export opportunities in emerging economies than in industrial countries.

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