Bucking the national trend, Pennsylvania generated $350 million in new export sales in 2008-09. The percentage increase was greater in the Commonwealth than for the country as a whole, according to the Office of International Business Development at the DCED.
Exports represented 7.8 percent of the state’s gross domestic product in 2008 compared to 6.7 percent in 2007 and 4 percent in 2002. Recent figures from the World Institute for Strategic Economic Research showed Pennsylvania exported $34.4 billion worth of goods in 2008, or 18 percent more than in 2007, while total U.S. exports increased by 12 percent.
Says DCED acting secretary George Cornelius: “Without the investments Governor Rendell has made in helping Pennsylvania-based companies find new overseas markets, this bad economy’s bite would be deeper and it would hurt more hardworking men and women here.”
Source: Steve Weitzman, DCED
Writer: Christine O’Toole
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