Trade with East Asia grew in 2011 by 11 percent on 2010 figures says the new DFAT reports. The Americas also increased their trade with Australia by 10 percent from 2010.

Though Europe is in the midst of an economic crisis, trade with the continent increased by 6 percent. This rise was led not only by commodity exports but also thr growth in export of high end manufactured goods.

Exports to Europe of ‘jewellery, measuring instruments and other so-called elaborately transformed manufactures’ were up by 10 percent to $322 million.

These three areas, East Asia, the Americas and Europe combined accounted for 82 percent of Australia’s international trade, while East Asia alone accounted for 55 percent of total trade.

These figures were released as part of a series of trade publications released annually by DFAT.

More than 40 Australian companies successfully expanded their operations to the UK last year with the help of UKTI, joining around 1,000 Australian businesses that are already operating there.

The competition invites those looking to expand into the UK to submit their business plan online by 3 February 2012, with finalists to be announced later that month. Go UK winners will be flown return by British Airways to London, and will be offered meetings with potential business partners, contacts and networking opportunities, a free limited company, business services and ongoing support from UKTI.

Director General of UKTI in Australia and New Zealand Richard Morris, says now is the opportune time to launch in the UK; especially those businesses with an eye to expand further into Europe.

“The UK is the easiest place in Europe to do business and has the least barriers to entrepreneurship in the world. Just as Australia can be a gateway to Asia, the UK is the gateway to Europe and a combined population of around 500 million people.”

Promoting the UK as the world’s sixth largest economy, Morris says that businesses of all sizes should be looking to apply to Go UK. “Everyone has heard about Macquarie, Westfield, BHP Billiton, NAB and others at the big end of town. But not so many people know about the SMEs that crack the UK market every year.”

Adding that the UK’s economy is poised to grow with the Olympics just around the corner, and that the Australian dollar is continuing its strong value, Morris is keen to promote Go UK as a promising entry into the market, following the success of a similar initiative, UK Market Entry, run last year.

To enter, visit here.

However the IMF policy board is keeping a positive outlook and says it has agreed to “act decisively to restore confidence and financial stability, and rekindle global growth.” IMF chief Christina Lagarde is trying hard to quash any concerns about the world’s top financial officials earnestness in dealing with the crisis. “There was no denial, no finger-pointing,” said Lagarde of the recent meeting of the IMF.

US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has given stern warning that Europe’s Leaders aren’t keeping up with the fast-moving markets, insisting that they move away from any reliance on the European central bank to deal with the crisis. The IMF, alongside Germany and France, has agreed to commit to the July 21 package of new money for Greece and broaden the scope of the emergency European Financial Stability Facility. “We are hand in hand with Germany to implement the July 21 agreement, not to move away from this strategy,” said French Finance Minister, Francois Baroin.

Many hurdles are still to come, with Greece still hoping to remain in the eurozone. German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble said if Greece takes the necessary measures, “we’ll do everything to make that happen”.

The new USD190 million Triple-E class ships scheduled for delivery between 2013-15, with an option on an additional 20, will be the largest of any type currently sailing at 400 metres long, 59m wide and 73m high. The 18,000 TEU (20 foot container) capacity is 16 percent or 2,500 containers more than today’s biggest container ship the Emma Maersk.

The Triple-E will produce 20 percent less CO₂ per container than the Emma Maersk and 50 percent less than the industry average on the Asia-Europe trade lane and consume around 35 percent less fuel than the other 13,000 TEU vessels to be delivered to other shipping lines in the next few years for the same service.

The design uses optimised hull and bow forms and two ultra long stroke engines to turn two propellers. An advanced waste heat recovery system will capture and reuse energy from the engine’s exhaust gas for extra propulsion with less fuel consumption.

All materials used will be mapped in a cradle-to-cradle passport that prescribes how they can be recycled or safely disposed of when the vessel is retired from service.

It’s a market with a population twice the size of Australia, strategically positioned between Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East, thus with the potential to service a number of growing areas.

According to Valentyn Adomaytis, Ukrainian Ambassador to Australia and New Zealand, interest in Australia is increasing, just as bilateral trade has grown to more than AUD500 million over the past few years.

“In the current global economic recovery we are witnessing a growth of business cooperation between Ukraine and Australia,” he says, noting that Australian exports to Ukraine more than doubled in the first quarter of this year.

While Australia isn’t generally well known in Ukraine, there are sectors where we are well regarded, says Dan Tebbutt, senior trade commissioner in Austrade’s Moscow office which services Ukraine: “In mining, we have an extremely positive reputation and in agriculture we’re widely known and respected.” And with Ukraine evolving its agribusiness and mining industries, it’s a country wide open to Australia’s expertise in those areas.

New exporters

Ukraine is not really a market for new exporters, warns Tebbutt. “It’s a country of great potential but it’s also a country of considerable challenges. It’s still an emerging market and it’s still a country where issues such as the rule of law is a concern.”

He does, however, suggest that leveraging our expertise in agriculture may help. “It has a fair bit of unrealised potential. Australia has a lot to offer Ukraine in terms of services for increasing the efficiency of their agricultural production,” he offers.

Another aspect of agriculture is livestock, suggests Stefan Romaniw, chairman of the Australian Federation of Ukrainian Organisations. “I’ve been put in touch with people who are interested in exports from Australia. They want cattle and sheep, of all things, because they’re trying to build their industry.”

Similarly, the mining sector can play to Australia’s strengths. Ukraine has an energy shortage and is largely reliant on Russian gas. Australian companies can help by providing more modern techniques for exploiting their coal reserves and unconventional gas.

“We know of Australian companies actively looking for those types of opportunities in Ukraine as Australia has a lot of knowledge and experience in that area,” says Tebbutt.

New exporters to Ukraine tend to be larger as they are able to take greater risks. Smaller businesses should watch out for the offshoot opportunities that arise from bigger players making moves in the market.

Existing exporters

Mining and agricultural technology and services are more the domain of small to medium sized businesses than big corporates and the two sectors are just a launching pad for other services that Australia could introduce, notes Romaniw.

“We have a lot of intellectual property: for example, we could go to government and provide some of the expertise in processes that we have here.” He suggests that concepts such as occupational health and safety training to reduce mining accidents could reach other areas: “There’s a huge market in Ukraine, because that’s not a concept that people have quite grasped, especially when you see some of the building sites.”

He adds that although Ukraine is very advanced for an ‘emerging’ market, Australia could offer complementary services. “There are opportunities such as in operational maintenance; you may have the great planes but we can certainly service them,” he says.

BIS indicated that public debt in the major markets of Europe and the USA had replaced the private debt that triggered the global financial crisis, risking a repeat of the 2009 credit crunch: “A shock of virtually any size risks a replay of the events we saw in late 2008 and early 2009,” BIS stated in the report.

Policy makers must ensure growth is sustainable and not just fuelled by untenably low interest rates in place in much of the developed world, it recommended: “Although private sector debt has started to decline, public debt has taken its place, with sovereign fiscal positions already on an unsustainable path in a number of countries.”

BIS also warned that “macroeconomic policy is in a vastly worse position than it was three years ago, with little capacity to combat a new crisis”.

Its advice was to withdraw stimulus packages, increase interest rates and reform the financial system to prevent market-wide collapse.

Stevens noted that Europe only accounts for about five percent of Australian exports and “those exports have been declining over the past few years anyway because the euro area has been weak for a while” so its direct effects wouldn’t be significant.

However, the governor did warn that the crisis would become a global malaise since Europe had influence on other markets such as Asia and that “we in Australia must naturally keep a careful watch on all this,” he said.

It would also affect future global growth, he suggested. “Looking ahead, it has to be expected that the unfolding situation in Europe, which is going to result in earlier fiscal tightening than had been assumed by forecasters until now, will weigh somewhat on global growth in 2011.”

Back in the dark days of the GFC, the doomsayers predicted an Armageddon scenario in eastern Europe, with escalating debt, banking collapses and corporate failures likely to wipe Russia and some of its neighbours off the economic map for at least a decade or two.

As it turns out, it was Western Europe we should have worried about. The Russians are fast recovering from the global downturn, with predictions of a very respectable GDP growth rate of over 5.5 percent this year, and not one bank failure, corporate collapse or sovereign debt default to justify any of the doomsayers.

Furthermore, with rising disposable income and low personal debt, Russia’s rapidly growing middle class are doing their bit for the global economy judging by retail sales in Moscow, which now exceed those in London and Paris, and the 7 million mobile phones purchased in the first quarter of 2010 alone.

Even more encouraging are the moves being made by President Dmitry Medvedev to seriously address two of Russia’s most widely reported long-term problems:

An ageing population: The government is introducing a number of programs designed to improve Russia’s demographic profile by supporting foster families, improving pre-school education and offering financial incentives payments for second births.

An over-reliance on oil and gas exports: Medvedev’s 2008 blueprint Strategy 2020 includes an ambitious plan to attract foreign capital to an “innovation city” in the Moscow suburb of Skolkovo designed to “revive the greatness of a nation once known for scientific and technological achievement”.

His vision is for the technology sector to make up 15 percent of exports by 2020, attracting billions of investment into innovative projects and driving out corruption, abuse and theft, which is one of Russia’s greatest problems. I heard last week that Medvedev had sacked 14,000 policemen; I am sure there’s still a long way to go but that must be a good start.

Russia’s economic fundamentals are already the envy of most of Europe, their GDP per capita is the highest of all the BRICs (currently US$9,750 rising to US$15,500 by 2014, according to the International Monetary Fund) and Russian corporate earnings are expected to be the highest in the world in 2010, according to East Capital.

Russia is currently the sixth largest economy in the world, will be one of the top performing stockmarkets of 2010, and their fast growing economy offers significant potential to exporters and investors. Don’t believe everything you read in the press!

The drop was a decrease of 5.6 percent compared with arrivals in the same period last year, according to data by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This included double-digit declines from some of our biggest European visitor markets.

“The disruptions to aviation in Europe mean Australia welcomed 10,900 fewer visitors from the UK in April compared to last year,” said Brett Gale, executive director of TTF. He added that arrivals from Germany were down 1,400 and visitors from France dropped by 700. “Those declines from our top three European source markets account for more than half the overall loss for the month.”

The loss of visitors also meant a drop in tourist spending as European visitors on average spend more than $5,000 per capita.

Donnelly says because the eurozone comprises 20 percent of world GDP and 16 percent of the world’s importing, any funding problems would cause stagnation.

He adds there’ll be “some interference to economic activity because the eurozone is quite a supplier of capital and lending to other countries, which is now likely to be scaled back” and predicts a rise in unemployment.

As for the bailout package handed to Greece, it will provide “temporary financial relief” but won’t really address fiscal problems, he said. “Governments at the periphery need to carry out large spending cuts and tax rises to shore up their solvency and deep structural adjustments to boost competitiveness. The trouble is the fiscal and structural adjustments needed are probably beyond these countries’ ‘pain thresholds’.

“It is therefore quite thinkable that governments will be unable to repay some of the EU-guaranteed loans they have taken out when they fall due, and at that point will either have to default outright, or persuade EU governments to extend their loans.”