Professor John McHale:

There is a complicated story to that. Certainly in the first half of last year contract manufacturing had a huge, positive impact on growth. In the middle of last year we began noting that this was unlikely to continue and was likely to unwind. We outlined in this part of the report the reasons it was likely to unwind. It is really a timing issue. Some of the offsetting import measures only came into play in the second half of the year. Taking the year as a whole, contract manufacturing had no effect on overall growth. It really affected the timing of growth. Looking forward, we would expect the export and import signs to balance out. There could be timing issues which could lead to some volatility in the numbers. Overall, however, while it had a huge impact, it was very likely to unwind. It was the point we were making last year and it did happen as we envisioned. Contracting manufacturing, overall, should not be having a substantive impact on growth.