"Australia's exports have continued to diversify over the 1990s, placing Australia in a strong position to adapt to further changes in world demand as East Asia recovers", the Minister for Trade, Mr Vaile said today. Mr Vaile was commenting on the release of a new report in the TradeWinds series (The Transformation of World Trade: Changing Patterns of Global Import Demand and Australia's Response) published by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The new TradeWinds report is the second in the series, originally launched in 1998. It focuses on changes in the composition of world trade, and in Japanese, US and Korean imports, over the 1990s. It also looks at changes in the composition of Australian exports. "Australia's exports of elaborately transformed manufactures (ETMs) have shown particularly strong growth, rising by more than 140 per cent between 1990 and 1998 - or at almost double the growth of more simply transformed manufactures" Mr Vaile said. "ETMs now make up more than a fifth of our merchandise exports, and all manufactures almost a third. The growth in Australian manufactures exports has been more than double the increase in the world's manufactures exports over the 1990s." "A wide variety of ETMs exports have been growing strongly" Mr Vaile said. "Exports ranging from copper bars, to motor cars and power generating machinery and parts have grown at trend rates in excess of 20 per cent annually over the past decade." "Australia's service industries have also grown rapidly, led by an increase of over 110 per cent in travel services between 1990 and 1998" Mr Vaile said. "They have added to the contribution made by the more traditional agricultural and mining industries." Mr Vaile noted that changes in demand in major Australian markets were likely to accelerate rather than diminish over the next five to ten years. "The restructuring which Japan is now undergoing is in some respects more intense than earlier in the decade, and there will be further substantial changes in the markets of the crisis-affected economies in East Asia as they begin to recover," Mr Vaile said. Copies of the report can be purchased by contacting Jane Monico in the Department's Market Development Division (phone 02 6261 3114, fax: 02 6261 3321, email jane.monico@dfat.gov.au).
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