The Generalitat expects Catalan exports to grow by 16% in 2022 and reach a new historical record, up to 93,500 million euros. According to the Acció agency, this would be the highest figure in the historical series, which dates back to 1993. The projected 16% increase for 2022 is significantly higher than that of global foreign trade as a whole, which the World Trade Organization (WTO) places at 3.5%. For the Department of Business, the exports of Catalan companies are consolidating as the main engine of growth of the Catalan economy and demonstrate the "robustness" of the foreign sector. The definitive data for the whole of 2022 will be known in mid-February.
"The Catalan foreign sector is the spearhead of our economy, one of the features that defines us as a country and one of the great strengths of the productive fabric," highlighted the Minister of Business, Roger Torrent, in a statement, in which he also noted that Catalan companies are "fully inserted" in international trade flows and have adapted to "a new way of doing business" after the pandemic.
The minister also warned that now the challenge for companies in the medium term will be to diversify or shorten value chains to make them more "resilient and secure." "We are in a context of redefinition of the international order with an increasingly polarized world where foreign trade will be used as a geopolitical strategy," he added, reports ACN.
According to the Govern, sales in the foreign market are equivalent to 33% of Catalan GDP, a ratio that is above countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, or Finland. In the last ten years, exports have grown uninterruptedly and have accumulated a growth of 59%, with the sole exception of 2020 as a consequence of the lockdown caused by the pandemic.