Martin Heydon
Question:66. Deputy Martin Heydon asked the Minister for Finance the proportion of every euro spent in the State that remains in the State; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [51825/12]
View answerWednesday, 21 November 2012
Questions (66)
Written answers
Ireland is generally considered to be a particularly open economy with imports accounting for over three quarters of GDP. A considerable share of spending by households and firms leaves the economy on imported goods, while at the same time a considerable share of the outputs of Irish firms is exported abroad leading to payment coming into Ireland. Evidence of the high import content of final demand can be seen in the Balance of Payments figure, which shows the current account moving from a deficit of -5.7% of GDP in 2008 to a surplus of 1.1% in 2011. This suggests that the large contraction in final demand over the period contained a large amount of imported goods and services.
More detail on the import content of spending by individual sectors can be found in Table 5 of the CSO’s input-output tables for 2005, the latest year for which these data are available, at the link below. The ‘import of goods and services’ row estimates the share (at the margin) of each euro that is spent on imported goods for spending by a range of sectors in the economy, ranging from zero to one. For example the import share of ‘agriculture, forestry and fishing’ is 0.335, as evident from the bottom of page 38. The release also contains detailed background information.
http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/economy/2005/inputoutput_2005.pdf