R.I. 9th among states for YTD export growth through Feb.

PROVIDENCE – The Ocean State ranked ninth among the 50 states during the first two months of 2015 for its export growth of 8.1 percent year over year, according to e-forecasting.com.
The latest ranking is an improvement over January’s rank of 20th.
For February alone, Rhode Island’s foreign sales rose to $193 million, a 15 percent increase from a year ago, e-forecasting.com said.
Manufacturing exports grew 2.3 percent year over year in February to $114.6 million. Exports of manufactured goods, which e-forecasting called “an important contributor to factory jobs,” accounted for 59 percent of all state exports in the month.
Exports of non-manufactured goods – agricultural goods, mining products and re-exports (foreign goods that entered the state as imports and are exported in substantially the same condition as when imported) – rose 40 percent in February compared with February 2014.
In Rhode Island, exports grew 8.5 percent from January to February, following a decrease of 18.1 percent in January from December. State trade figures are adjusted for seasonal variation to smooth out monthly fluctuations such as number of days in a month and holidays.

Nationally, exports fell 3.9 percent year over year in February to $125.6 billion, reflecting declines in capital goods, industrial supplies and materials, automotive vehicles and parts, and food and beverages.
“International trade is on a free fall as worldwide merchandise exports dropped in February for the fourth month in a row to their lowest monthly level in 60 months,” Evangelos Otto Simos of e-forecasting wrote in his report.
While the World Trade Organization ranked the United States the second largest exporter in the world for the first two months of the year, foreign sales fell 4.5 percent to $241 billion during that period compared with the first two months of 2014.
China, the world’s leading exporter, sold $361 billion worth of goods abroad so far this year.
“The outlook over the next few months for exports of manufactured goods depends on the pace of incoming orders from abroad. According to the March business survey conducted by the Institute of Supply Management, the nation’s purchasing executives are pessimistic about the outlook of growing export markets,” Simos wrote in the report.

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