Exports Success- By chance or design?

Going Forward

Our exports are doing well at the moment, but are we producing highly sought after, or well crafted precision engineered items, or food etc etc at hugely attractive prices or are we just "being lucky" at the moment?

Will our exports continue to perform well? Have we nailed a formula for success?

RichardAnd

Our exports are doing well yes, though I'm not too sure as to why this is so. I'd imagine that it's down to issues like tax and the fact that, in spite of what gets said in here, Ireland is actually quite a good country to do buisness in. At least when compared to places like Greece.

The down side is that our exports are hugely dependant on the global economy. If that takes a slide, we'll get hit pretty hard.

paul71

Does the answer to the reason for our success in exporting lie in what we export. We don't make cars, heavy engineering equipment or build ships. We do export medical devices, pharmaceuticals, quality food produce, and computer software/hardware/consumables.

Welease

I would imagine the primary reason is that those business's whose primary focus is exports have always had to keep an eye on costs, quality, value etc. in order to compete in a global market.. Any upturns in the global market will see a direct increase in their revenue.

There is a lot less room for celtic tiger excesses when you have to compete with other lower cost economies (even though our increasing costs did make it more diffificult). If many of our local business's had the same focus they would have stood a greater chance of surviving the downturn.

Manach

Focusing on the IT sector, these are an export driven success due to the good skill levels of staff, being native english speakers so can comminicate well with the US markets, and that Ireland is part of the EU.
However, offhand I'd say the majority of IT exports come from multinationals. Whilst this is still money earned, it to me suggests that Irish IT companies do not seem able to cross a threshold to become major IT players themselves - content to remain at a certain mid-level, or waiting to be bought-out by the multinationals.

irishh_bob

soft commodities ( beef , milk , cereals etc ) are booming worldwide at the moment , if thier is a decreased demand , our exports will suffer , its luck