Annual Import/export balance
Contractual cross-border exchanges in 2006
The balance of contractual transactions across borders, which totalled 61.9 TWh, returned to a similar volume as that recorded in 2004, up by 3.3 TWh on the figures for 2005
A border by border breakdown of this export balance reveals some contrasting changes in 2006, compared with 2005:
- a rise in the export balance with continental European countries(1) (+6.2 TWh, or +15%). This rise was due to two factors: first, a fall in the import balance of exchanges with Germany (with imports falling faster than exports); second, there was a rise in net exports to Belgium (with exports rising strongly). These factors were partially offset by the drop in net exports to Italy (exports fell and imports rose slightly).
- and a drop in net exports to Spain (-2.2 TWh i.e. a fall of around one third) and England (-0.7 TWh i.e. -7%).
The cumulative volume of exports and imports (117.9 TWh) was some 5.3 TWh lower in 2006 than in 2005, a record year. That drop reflected the behaviour observed on the borders with continental European countries (-5.6 TWh) and with England (-0.3 TWh), whilst the cumulative volume of exchanges rose on the border with Spain (+0.6 TWh).
The overall drop in the volume of transactions with continental Europe was due to the reduced exchanges with Germany (-8.4 TWh), Italy (-1.5 TWh) and Switzerland (-0.3 TWh), whereas transactions with Belgium actually increased (+4.6 TWh).
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(1) Belgium, Germany, Italy, Switzerland.
