External sales behaviour of Northern Ireland businesses: A focus on 10X sectors

Ann-Marie Ward, Esmond Birnie, Stuart Henderson, Frederick Booth, Thomas Bell

Research output: Other contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Our results are based on the returns of about 5,000 Northern Irish businesses each year. The sample is skewed towards larger businesses, as reflected in the high overall average employment figure of 60.49 individuals per business. The general trend observed is that the percentage of total sales to these export markets increased steadily over the period. As expected, sales to these external markets declined in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Sectoral differences are evident in the percentage of sales to the four markets. Generally, it seems non-10X businesses are less engaged with external markets relative to 10X businesses.

Next the sectoral data is analysed over the period 2014 to 2020 for each external market. Overall, the largest external market is Great Britain (GB), followed by the Republic of Ireland (ROI). Differences in the relative importance of markets are observed across the sectors. For example, the ROI market is most important to the agri-tech sector, and the rest of the world (ROW) market is most important to the health and life sciences sector which is probably driven by the USA . This sector is also very active in markets in the rest of the European Union (REU). In general, the 10X sectors have the strongest exporting behaviour and their sales to GB have also been steadily increasing over the period.
Original languageEnglish
TypeData insight
Media of outputonline
Number of pages7
Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 31 May 2024

Keywords

  • Economics
  • Trade
  • Exporting
  • Northern Ireland
  • Productivity

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