Figures show significant growth in trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland

New figures showed that exports from Northern Ireland jumped 60% in the first nine months of the year.

Data published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) today reveals that imports from Northern Ireland reached €2.8 billion in the first nine months of 2021.

Exports to Northern Ireland from the Republic rose 48% to €2.6 billion over the same period.

These figures come amid ongoing negotiations between the UK government and the European Union over the future of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Unionists argue that post-Brexit trade arrangements harm the union between Northern Ireland and Britain by setting a border in the Irish Sea.

These trade arrangements created economic barriers to the movement of goods between Britain and Northern Ireland, with the aim of avoiding the creation of a hard border on the island of Ireland.

It achieved this by effectively keeping Northern Ireland within the EU’s single market for goods, an arrangement that has led to screening of products crossing the Irish Sea from Britain.

Earlier, chief Brexit negotiator David Frost expressed concern about the impact of the protocol on trade between Britain and Northern Ireland.

“I think there is no doubt that the diversion of trade that has taken place and the way in which the protocol operates has upset people about the power of communications and that plays into the sense of economic and social anxiety that we are picking up on, which is our desire to resolve this as closely as possible,” he told BBC Radio Ulster yesterday. consensual and reasonable.

The Central Statistics Office also published revised figures showing that trade between Ireland and Northern Ireland between 2016 and 2020 was higher than previously thought.

The figures indicated that exports from Northern Ireland to Ireland were worth about 2.4 billion euros in 2019 and 2020.

According to the CSO: “Where there has been a significant increase in trade with Northern Ireland since the beginning of 2021, data has been queried with traders.

“In many cases, increases are explained by changes in supply chains.

«In some cases, merchants reported that they had previously incorrectly reported that their trading partner was Great Britain, when in fact it should have been Northern Ireland.»