South Australia has achieved a record high $2.4 billion in service exports in the 2013-14 financial year – boosting the state’s education, tourism, health, business and legal sectors.
Minister for Investment and Trade Martin Hamilton-Smith said the latest data brings total goods and services exports for the year to $14.7 billion.
“South Australia’s annual growth in net service trade at 14.9 per cent is around double the Australian national average growth of 7.3 per cent over the year – this is an outstanding result,” Mr Hamilton-Smith said.
Key growth sectors included education-related travel (up $87m, 9.8%), personal travel (up 180m, 12.9%), other business services (up $104m, 70.7%), telecommunication, computer and information services (up $46m, 153.3%), and transport (up $44m, 23.5%).
Mr Hamilton-Smith said “the service sector is the untold success story of our international economic engagement story.
“As the state continues to transform into a service economy which is globally competitive, it is important that we ensure those industries are tapped into export opportunities.
“This week’s historic China-Australia Free Trade Agreement offers even greater opportunity and highly competitive market access to the service sector.
“The agreement opens the door for education, health, aged care, legal, finance, professional services, construction, manufacturing and telecommunications services.
“South Australia is well placed to serve the giant emerging markets of Asia – thanks to the China Free Trade Agreement along with the Korea Australia Free Trade Agreement and Japan Australia Economic Partnership Agreement.
“This week the State Government announced its new economic strategy to support international engagement, stating our objective was to create 6000 jobs through foreign investment in South Australia and for exports to soar to more than $18 billion per annum by 2017.
“South Australia’s service export results demonstrate that our state is well placed to achieve our international engagement target of increasing investment and jobs,” Hamilton-Smith said.