Exports of non-tourism services by Spanish companies have rebounded strongly after the pandemic and now account for 6.8% of GDP. The Bank of Spain has prepared a complete report on the evolution of these transactions in recent years and the main conclusion is that after the pandemic, where they fell by 20% in 2020 as a result of sanitary restrictions, they grew by 16.1% and 28.9% respectively in 2021 and 2022.
These are the transactions of construction, financial, insurance and pension services, intellectual property rights, telecommunications, information technology... and they are different from those of tourist services. Together they make up global exports, which are at all-time highs.
In 2022, these exports of non-tourism related service goods were up to 20% of their 2019 level, which confirms their expansion path, which has gone from representing 2.4% of GDP in 1995 to the aforementioned 6.8% last year.
The reasons, according to the Bank of Spain document signed by César Martín Machuca, director of the economic situation analysis department, and Coral García, attached to the same team, that explain this evolution are several. In the first place, the development of information and communication technologies, which has made it possible to eliminate barriers to trade and expand the export of financial, insurance or pension services. Secondly, the economic transformations, which have made it possible to liberalize services. Digitization has also had an influence, with a sharp increase in demand after the pandemic. And, finally, the increase in transport flows in recent years.
The Bank of Spain also observes a margin for Spanish exports of non-tourism services to continue growing. “Its relative weight in GDP remains below that observed in the euro zone and its main economies, with the exception of Italy. Indeed, these transactions are close to 9% of GDP in France and Germany, while the average in the EU exceeds 7%. Spanish companies, therefore, still have a way to continue expanding their transactions.
Within the exports of non-tourism services, the main sector that concentrates income is that of business services, with 36% of the total. It is followed by transport, with 24%, and telecommunications, computing and information, with 17%. These three types accumulate more than three quarters of the exports of services other than tourism during 2022.
Exports require high fixed costs and a high competitive capacity. In this way, the Bank of Spain concludes, it is the large companies, with more than 250 employees, that accumulate practically half the value of international transactions of non-tourism services. And the supervisor adds: "In the services in which the export activity of large companies and business groups is more relevant, there are hints that the recovery of sales to the rest of the world after the pandemic would tend to be somewhat more intense". However, he warns, the evidence is partial due to the "high volatility" of foreign trade in the last two years.
The nucleus of large exporting companies in Spain, normally multinational groups, have benefited from the context of wage moderation, to boost their dynamism, concludes the organization led by Pablo Hernández de Cos.
