FLORIDA: The latest international trade numbers show that $4.54 billion worth of goods left Florida for international markets in June, a decrease of 9.9 percent from May, according to Durham, N.H.-based e-forecasting.com.
The latest international trade numbers show that $4.54 billion worth of goods left Florida for international markets in June, a decrease of 9.9 percent from May, according to Durham, N.H.-based e-forecasting.com.
The June data is the most recent available.
Exports of manufactured goods contributed significantly to the state’s international trade, accounting for 75 percent of all state exports in June. Exports from state manufacturers decreased in June by 11.3 percent from the previous month to $3.41 billion.
Meanwhile, exports of non-manufactured goods went down by 5.4 percent in June to $1.13 billion. This group of foreign sales consists of agricultural goods, mining products and re-exports — foreign goods that entered the state as imports and are exported in substantially the same condition.
Florida ranked 24th among the 50 states through the first half of this year. Compared to the same period in 2014, foreign sales from Florida’s companies, seasonally adjusted, decreased by an annual rate of 2.7 percent.
So what are the prospects for the remainder of this year? According to a July business survey conducted by the Institute of Supply Management, purchasing executives are not optimistic about the prospects of growing export markets. The Tempe, Ariz.-based research institute reported that its export indicator showed a decline in incoming export orders for the second month in a row and for the fifth time in 2015.
From the pool of respondents of the largest corporations that sell their products abroad, only 11 percent reported more export orders in July than in the previous month; 74 percent reported no change in export orders from June’s levels; and 15 percent reported smaller export orders from the previous month.
Important for Florida’s exporting companies, the IMF forecasts the volume of global trade to grow 4.1 percent in 2015, compared with an increase of 3.2 percent in 2014, said e-forecasting.com’s Evangelos Otto Simos.
