Mr. Ian Power:

As Mr. McCarthy said, contract manufacturing exports were one of the main drivers of the inflated GDP figures but this year they are making a negative contribution to overall GDP growth. We expect this to continue in the latter half of this year.

On the imports side, goods imports have been quite weak in the first half of 2016. Once again, contract manufacturing is weighing on goods imports, although to less of an extent than on the goods exports side. As we can see from the slide on display, service imports accelerated in the first two quarters, mainly because of the substantial onshoring Mr. McCarthy alluded to earlier in that the investment in intellectual property assets is all being imported. Again, we are anticipating something broadly similar in the latter half of this year. In 2017 we are assuming that imports will move in line with final demand, that is, in line with developments in consumption, investment and exports.

The graph shows the current account in the balance of payments. We are anticipating the current account will fall in 2016 and 2017 as a share of GDP, reflecting a weaker contribution from net exports and also a negative terms of trade effect.

This means that import prices will move faster than export prices, weighing on the current account balance.