opportunity.
Therefore, any business expecting
to sustain positive growth rates during this, admit-
tedly, tough year,
must invest in extroversion
.
After all, this obvious fact is proved even in the
case of severely tested sectors, such as clothing
and textiles, where slight, albeit unmistakable,
growth has been recorded, especially in the
exports of companies that have developed suc-
cessful brand names.
In any case, the general increase in interest for
finding a path to overseas markets is corroborat-
ed by the rising number of listings with the
exporter registers of many local Chambers, and
a, not the least bit negligible, 10% increase in
applications for registering with the Pan-Hellenic
Exporters Association.
In line with the above, the Hellenic Foreign Trade
Board decided to support the participation of
Greek enterprises in another 18 expositions dur-
ing 2011, a 40% increase as compared to the pre-
vious year.
A further point of general interest concerns the
change in the structure of exports
, since indus-
trial products now account for a much larger part
of Greek exports than primary sector goods.
Based on (eleven-month) data from ELSTAT,
the
top-25 exported goods, which account for
slightly more than
63%
of total exports
, are the
following (listed by descending order of signifi-
cance):
refined petroleum products, pharmaceuticals, alu-
minium, edible fruit and nuts, fresh or frozen fish,
vegetables (packaged or preserved), confidential,
copper, cotton, packaged or preserved fruit, iron
and steel bars and other articles, lime and
cement, clothing-knitted or crocheted fabrics,
cheese and milk, oils and fats, plates & sheets of
plastics, unmanufactured tobacco, aircraft and
associated equipment, equipment for distributing
electricity, other plastics, in primary forms,
telecommunications equipment, articles of appar-
el and clothing accessories of other than textile
fabrics, tubes, pipes and hollow profiles of iron or
steel, perfumery, cosmetic or toilet preparations,
articles (n.e.s.) of plastics.
In regard to destination, exports to European
Union states account for approximately two thirds
of the total, while seven out of the top-ten markets
are from the EU (Germany, Italy, Cyprus,
Bulgaria, Un. Kingdom, Romania, France) and
four are neighbouring countries (Bulgaria, Turkey,
Romania, Albania), while the list is completed
with the US at the seventh place.
It should also be noted that the value of Greek
exports was also boosted by the increase in the
global prices of many raw materials, which obvi-
Trade with Greece
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