Press release: 12.465-056/21

Foreign trade 2020: significant declines in imports (-8.6%) and exports (-7.5%)

Vienna, 2021-03-11 – In 2020, total imports amounted to €144.20 bn and total exports added up to €141.93 bn, according to preliminary results by Statistics Austria. Compared to 2019, Austrian imports decreased by 8.6% and Austrian exports declined by 7.5%. The balance of trade thus showed a deficit of €2.27 bn. Working-day adjusted, the rates of decrease were 9.0% for imports and 7.9% for exports.

The decline in March, April and May, which were the first months particularly affected by corona-related restrictions, significantly contributed to the negative development of the reporting year as a whole. A general flattening of exports as well as imports was already seen in January and February 2020, before the first Corona lockdown in Austria took place. In the last two reporting months of 2020, slight growth was seen in both trade flows.

For more detailed information please refer to the German version. Visualisations of the foreign trade data for 2020 are available in the ITGS-Atlas, the interactive tree maps on imports as well as exports and a bar diagram.