Top 5 exporters account for nearly one-third of Ireland's total exports

Source: Xinhua | 2020-06-11

The combined export value of the five largest exporting enterprises in Ireland was over 43 billion euros in 2018 (about 49 billion U.S. dollars), accounting for 31 percent of the country's total export value, according to the figures released by the Irish national statistics bureau CSO on Wednesday.

There is less of a concentration of large traders on the import side than on the export side, said the CSO, adding that the combined import value of the top five importers in the country was 18.8 billion euros in 2018, accounting for only 21 percent of the country's total import value.

There were 8,868 exporting enterprises and 31,741 importing enterprises in Ireland in 2018, each with an export or import value of over 5,000 euros in the year, said the CSO.

In 2018, the combined export value of the top 50 Irish exporters accounted for 75 percent of the country's total exports whereas the combined import value of the top 50 importers accounted for 52 percent of the total imports, it said.

The CSO figures, released in a report entitled "Profile of Trading Enterprises 2018", also showed that the pharmaceutical sector was the largest contributor to the Irish exports in 2018.

In 2018, the export value of the Irish pharmaceutical sector was close to 70 billion euros, accounting for about half of the country's total exports, followed by the other manufacturing and construction sector (21 percent) and the agri-food sector (13 percent).

China is now the third largest market for the Irish agri-food exports and the second largest market for both the Irish dairy exports and pork exports, according to the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine.

In 2017, Ireland exported 667 million euros worth of dairy products and over 100 million euros of pork products to China, said the department. (1 euro= 1.137 U.S. dollars)