Export Concerns - Where Are The British?
06-Apr-2011
Technical Translations have learned that BCC Director Adam Marshall recently criticised small and medium sized businesses in the UK for being “reactive rather than proactive” when it comes to chasing overseas markets.
This followed a BCC survey of over 8000 small and medium sized companies - which made the unnerving revelation that over 70% of them do not actually export at all. Now that a time of poor economic growth in the UK seems to be coinciding with an explosion of emerging markets overseas, there has been some concern voiced by business leaders and experts alike that we are not doing enough to break away from traditional export markets such as former Commonwealth countries, Europe and North America, to explore opportunities in high growth developing countries such as India, China and Brazil. And at global trade fairs everyone is wondering where the British have gone.
In an interesting contrast to the findings of the BCC survey, recent business surveys by both RBS and Natwest showed that 70% of British businesses believe that now is the time to export, and 59% thought that they had a product which would sell well abroad.
So what is stopping them? Various sources suggest that a combination of poor education and a lack of confidence were mainly to blame for British hesitancy to jump into the global pool, and a shortage of suitable trade finance schemes provided by the UK Government has also been cited as a factor contributing to the general
malaise. According to the RBS survey nearly 60% of businesses said that there is a dearth of information regarding how to go about financing exports, and that they have worries over financial protection against not being paid by customers.
With David Cameron having recently led the largest trade delegation to China in the last 200 years, it is obvious that the current UK Government is determined to assist businesses make a strong recovery from the recession and to affirm the UK’s position at the economic “top table”. It will be interesting to see how this translates into action in the weeks and months ahead, and maybe education should figure on any Government agenda just as highly as financial support.
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