Norways analysis according to

its international trade

patterns
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a sovereign and
unitary monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of
the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic
archipelago of Svalbard.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway )
Even though, Norway is not a member state of European Union, it
is a member of European Economic Area, EU being the major
import and export partner of Norway.
Norway exports mainly: petroleum and petroleum products,
machinery and equipment, metals, chemicals, ships and fish.
Norway is in the global top 5 exporters of crude oil and
approximately 20% of EU gas comes from Norway and it is also
the EU's main source of primary aluminium.
Machinery and equipment, chemicals, metals and foodstuffs
are the main categories of goods that are imported.
United Kingdom, Germany, United States and Netherlands are,
both import and export, Norways main trading partners. United
Kingdon and Germany are also two of the main EU importers of
Norwegian gas.
Norway exports seafood to about 130 countries all over the world,
Russia being the biggest and the most important single market for
their exports.

Because of the high quality of the sea products, the demand for
Norways seafood is getting only bigger with every year, which
means that the future for the fish industry is looking even more
promising.

Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_o
f_Norway#Economic_structure_and_su
stained_growth

In 2013, the value of merchandise exports of Norway decreased

slightly by 4.8 percent to reach 153.3 bln US$, while its
merchandise imports increased slightly by 3.1 percent to reach
90.1 bln US$ (Graph 1, Table 2 and Table 3). The merchandise
trade balance recorded a moderate surplus of 63.2 bln US$ (Graph
1).
The largest merchandise trade balance was with MDGDeveloped
Europe at 67.6 bln US$ (Graph 4). Merchandise exports in Norway
were diversified amongst partners; imports were also diversified.
The top 11 partners accounted for 80 percent or more of exports
and 17 partners accounted for 80 percent or more of imports
(Graph 5).
In 2009, the value of exports of services of Norway decreased
substantially by 14.8 percent, reaching 38.6 bln US$, while its
imports of services decreased substantially by 18.1 percent and
reached 36.9 bln US$ (Graph 2).
There was a relatively small trade in services surplus of 1.8 bln
US$.

Table 1 presents the evolution of the top 10 of Norways export

commodities for 3 years: 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Firstly we can see, petroleum gases and oils are the main export
commodities and a very important sector of activity for Norway.
While export of petroleum oils decreased, the export of petroleum
gases increased. Thus, we can see and upward trend and it more
likely that the growth will continue according to the preliminary
data.

We can see that the preliminary data assumes an increase in

exports compared with the previous year in September-October
period.
Now lets take a look at the categories that follow.
Secondly, we see that after the exports of the commodities that are
not specified according to kind, the export of frozen fish increased
a lot, especially between 2012 and 2013.
The importance of fish exports is not negligible, because it is an
industry with a great potential due to the high quality Norwegian
products.

According to the data provided by Statistics Norway, the weekly

exports of frozen salmon are increasing and in the 49 th week of
2014 they reached more than 20000 tones in terms of quantity
exported.
Thirdly, as it presented in Table 1, the data shows that the export of
metals, namely aluminium and nickel, is of great importance for
Norways economy. Aluminium is intensively exported to European
Union, Norway being the main importer of this metal for EU.
Analyzing the commodities exported it is obvious that Norway
specialized in trade according to its natural resources
endowments. Natural resources of fish and petroleum are exploited
and exported because of their abundance.
Having a trade pattern, which is based mainly on the countrys
natural resources, may cause instability because:

 Oil prices tend to be volatile, thus the dependence on mainly

oil export may cause instability and recession;
Metals come in limited quantity and are not renewable, that
means that a country couldnt exploit such a resource
continuously;
Depending only on your natural resources could mean
sometimes the ignorance for other solutions for the countrys
development.
Because Norway chose to exploit what their country naturally had,
they overlooked the possibility to develop a high tech industry or a
capital-intensive industry.
Oil exports crowded out non-oil exports, and developed a
dependency under which the fiscal policy, the exchange rate, the
export earnings, the output and the employment are threatened in
times of price volatility.

Source: http://comtrade.un.org

10

Looking at the data above we can make some conclusions about

Norways preferences in terms of imports:
Norway imports a lot of goods that are the results of capitalintensive industries;
They export unwrought nickel and then import intermediate
products from nickel, instead of processing the metal by
themselves;
Norways trade balance is positive (Graph4).
After looking at the data on the whole me might say that Norway is
too dependent on the export of its natural resources and does too
little do develop high-tech institutions and diversified capital
intensive industries, even so Norway has proved very good at
keeping inflation down to resist overvaluation of the currency. Now
rises the question: for how long? If a period of extreme price
volatility would begin what would be the result?
As their fish industry is flourishing and seafood exports are
increasing in importance, Norway could strengthen their
economical stability.
Even if Norway refuses to enter the European Union it is not at all
isolated from trade. It is actively involved in exchange of goods with
EU, Asia and USA and if their abundance of natural resources will

11

turn against them or not, is a question to be answered as time will

pass.

Bibliography
http://www.ssb.no/en/forside;jsessionid=9B0D5D0754EBF1F9AECC2
EA5DE506AE5.kpld-as-prod10?hide-from-left-menu=true&languagecode=en&menu-root-alternative-language=true
http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-andregions/countries/norway/
http://globaledge.msu.edu/countries/norway/tradestats
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Norway#Economic_structur
e_and_sustained_growth
http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/tpr_e/tp369_e.htm
http://comtrade.un.org

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