Scholars have found that Brexit has reduced exports of UK services by £ 110bn

Brexit reduced UK exports of services by more than € 110 billion over four years, with new research showing that the trade impact of Britain’s decision to withdraw from the EU is noteworthy.

Experts at Aston University in Birmingham have found that exports of UK services from 2016 to 2019 would be less than £ 113 billion if the UK did not leave the EU in June 2016.

The researchers calculated this figure, predicted how the industry would grow from IT and financial companies to services, if they continued on the previous paths, and compared how this really progressed since the Brexit vote. The difference was £ 113 billion.

“What we find raises serious concerns about the potential outflow in the UK’s trade services position and the economy and jobs related to the service sector,” said economics professor Jun Du Aston Business School.

The findings outline the challenges facing UK exporting services in maintaining trade with the EU following the conclusion of the UK’s post-Brexit agreement with Brussels.

The agreement contains minimum provisions on financial and professional services – industries that are key to the UK economy. 2019 UK It had a surplus of 18 billion euros trade in services with the EU, against a deficit of 97 billion euros in goods.

Data for 2020 were not included in the Aston study because the pandemic has greatly distorted the economy. Du told the Financial Times that the trend of service companies moving away from the UK could accelerate as the impact of the pandemic disappears.

“The Covid era created difficulties in moving businesses and people [which] it slowed down that relocation process. . . it will now go up, and it will get worse, as companies see that not much is going on in the UK-EU negotiations. I think this is just the beginning, ”he said.

Exports of financial services were the hardest hit in terms of money as banks, insurers and asset managers moved thousands of people and billions of capital from the city and Canary Wharf centers to trade in new centers in Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin. without problems with customers after Brexit. Among the most affected sectors in the UK were business services, travel, transport and IT, according to research by Aston.

“The impact is behind it [from leaving the EU] the data is clear, “said John Springford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform think-tank, citing his research and data from the Office for National Statistics, the London School of Economics and the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. said the data show that the UK has dropped one-fifth of its trade with the EU due to Brexit.

“Brexit has already made Britain poorer than a branch of history that Britain had in the EU – or in a single market in fact,” he added.

Exports of cumulative services from Ireland in 2016 and 2019 were 126 billion euros more than projections based on 2016 trends. Aston’s teachers say this is because Ireland has won UK business after Brexit. Irish economists disagree.

“The increase in exports of Irish services is clearly due mainly to ICT exports (Facebook, Google, etc.),” he said. Conall Mac Coille, Davy is the leading economist at Ireland’s largest stockbroker, citing the information, communications and technology sector. “These companies were operating in Ireland before the referendum and have been booming ever since.”