Press release: 12.412-003/21

Foreign trade in October 2020: imports declined by 6.0%, exports by 10.7%

Vienna, 2021-01-08 – The value of imports of goods was at €13.48 bn in October 2020, a decrease of 6.0% compared to October 2019, as Statistics Austria reports. At the same time, exports of goods decreased by 10.7% to €13.16 bn. The balance of trade thus showed a deficit of €0.32 bn. Working-day adjusted, imports rose by 0.2%, while exports declined by 4.4%.

The significant decline due to Corona crisis in March (import: -7.8%, export: -4.3%), April (import: -26.0%, export: -23.7%) and May (import: -24.6%, export: -25.4%) was mainly responsible for the negative development of foreign trade in the current reporting year. In the period January to October 2020, total imports amounted to €119.29 bn and total exports added up to €117.77 bn. Compared to the corresponding period of the previous year, Austrian imports decreased by 10.5% and Austrian exports declined by 9.2%. A general flattening of exports as well as imports was already observed in January and February 2020, before the first Corona shutdown in Austria came into effect in mid-March 2020. The global ITGS balance (Austrian International Trade in Goods Statistics balance) showed a deficit of €1.52 bn.

For more detailed information please refer to the German version. Visualisations of the foreign trade data for 2019 are available in the ITGS-Atlas, the interactive tree maps on imports as well as exports and a bar diagram.