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Web posted
Monday, February 16, 2004
Alaska exports may rise by $100 million
By Tim Bradner
Alaska Journal of Commerce
While the final figures aren't in yet, the value of Alaska's commodity exports are expected to reach $2.6 billion for 2003, a $100 million increase from the previous year, according to Greg Wolf, executive director of the World Trade Center-Alaska.
That is about 10 percent of Alaska's Gross State Product, Wolf said.
Exports to China and South Korea were up last year, as were sales to European countries and Canada. Export sales to Korea in 2003 were up 32 percent over 2003, while sales to China were also up.
Actual sales to China through the first three quarters of 2003 were $139 million compared with $127 million for the same period of 2002 and $84 million for the first three quarters of 2001. China's purchases from Alaska are expected to total $150 million for all of 2003 when the final figures are tallied, Wolf said.
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However, exports to Japan, Alaska's biggest overseas customer, are expected to be flat, and exports to Taiwan are expected be be flat or even down slightly, Wolf said.
A new factor is Alaska's overseas sales of services such as engineering, which aren't included in federal export trade statistics, which only count hard goods.
Wolf estimates that Alaska firms are now earning $500 million to $750 million in revenues from sales of services overseas. The numbers are estimates because there is no way of getting hard data, which for commodity exports comes through required reporting to the U.S. Commerce Department.
One Alaska firm alone, Veco Corp., had $250 million in earnings overseas from mostly engineering services last year. Veco is doing work in Canada, Asia and the Middle East as well as Alaska and the continental U.S., Wolf said.
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