Vol. 445 No. 6
75 Mr. Rabbitte asked the Minister for Tourism and Trade the projected export figures for 1994; if his Department has undertaken any examination of the extent to which transfer price fixing by multi-national companies is influencing these figures; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [575/94]
The official Department of Finance forecast for merchandise exports, published in their Economic Review and Outlook for 1994, is for growth in export volume of about 7 per cent. Export prices are expected to increase by under 4 per cent on 1993. Applying these growth rates to the official 1993 CSO trade statistics, 1994 exports are projected to reach an estimated £21.9 billion for the current year.
The Department of Finance advise that their forecasts reflect expected growth in demand in our main markets, and are largely unaffected by transfer pricing behaviour that may take place in the multinational sector.
An Inter-Departmental Group, chaired by the Department of the Taoiseach, and on which my Department is represented, has been recently established by the Government to examine, inter alia, the statistics available on external trade and their impact on national income statistics. The group is still deliberating.
