The foreign sector was one of the main drivers that allowed the Spanish economy to advance 2.5% last year, above expectations, in a context marked by geopolitical tensions and the slowdown of the main economies in the face of the aggressive rise . of interest rates with which central banks have tried to curb inflation. In this context, exports of goods and services said goodbye to their second best year in the entire historical series in 2023, only behind 2022, reaching 383,689 million euros.
The increase in sales abroad and the gradual slowdown in domestic activity – which reduced imports by 7.2% to 424,000 million – contributed to reducing the trade deficit by 43.3% in interannual terms to 40,560 million of euros. At the same time, the maintenance of non-energy exports and the decline in imports of energy products (especially gas) has allowed a reduction of the energy deficit practically by half.
The volume of exports exceeds the records prior to the coronavirus pandemic by 32% and is close to the objective of 400,000 million euros that the Government set in its Strategy for the Internationalization of the Spanish Economy 2017-2027. The figures published this Monday confirm that the coverage rate – ratio between exports and imports – has stood at 90.4%, that is, 5.3 percentage points above that registered in 2022 (85.1% ).
The Secretary of State for Commerce, Xiana Méndez, has highlighted that these data have been achieved in a context of “stagnation” of the Eurozone and the European Union in general, which is where more than 62% of the exports. In fact, sales to partners such as Germany, Italy and Poland set a record last year. In a context of international uncertainty, Spanish exports have shown “robustness and resilience”, with a softer fall than that of the Twenty-Seven as a whole (-2.5%) and that of the euro zone (-3.3% )
This has been the case thanks to the resilience of trade in goods, the recovery of the tourism sector (with a record in both visitors and spending in 2023), the strength of other services with greater added value and the increase in investment flows. . direct foreigner. Non-energy exports have risen by 0.7% (with 2,500 million more euros), which has allowed us to partially offset the fall in the energy segment, of 20.6% (about 7,900 million) given the strong decline they have registered. Energy prices in relation to 2022, which is another of the keys that explain the data.
