Press release: 12.366-206/20

Foreign trade in August 2020 still restrained: imports declined by 5.6%, exports by 7.2%

Vienna, 2020-11-09 – The value of imports of goods was at €10.83 bn in August 2020, a decrease of 5.6% compared to August 2019, as Statistics Austria reports. At the same time, exports of goods decreased by 7.2% to €10.16 bn; Switzerland, Germany and the United States were affected likewise. The balance of trade thus showed a deficit of €0.67 bn. Working-day adjusted, the rates of decrease were 5.4% for imports and 6.7% for exports. A general flattening of exports as well as imports was already observed in January and February 2020, before the Corona shutdown in Austria came into effect in mid-March 2020.

The significant decline due to COVID-19 in March (import: -8.0%, export: -4.3%), April (import: -26.0%, export: -23.7%) and May (import: -24.7%, export: -25.4%) was mainly responsible for the negative development of foreign trade in the current reporting year. In the period January to August 2020, total imports amounted to €92.98 bn and total exports added up to €91.65 bn. Compared to the corresponding period of the previous year, Austrian imports decreased by 12.2% and Austrian exports declined by 10.2%. The global ITGS balance (Austrian International Trade in Goods Statistics balance) showed a deficit of €1.34 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.