Chapter 1 - Finance

Trade

Overview

This section contains information on Defence trade. It includes the estimated value of export orders of Defence equipment and services and payments made for services consumed by MOD establishments overseas (referred to as Balance of Payments Trade in Services or BoP).

The UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) arm of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) collects data on defence export contracts and orders placed. These data are collected from the UKTI DSO publication 'The World Defence Export Market' compiled via a quarterly survey with known UK defence contractors.

Detailed information of export licences and numbers of small arms and weapons are published in the Annual Report on Strategic Arms Exports Controls published by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). This is available online.

The MOD’s Balance of Payments statistics support the ONS estimate of the value of the UK’s BoP which is a measure of the UK’s trading account with the rest of the world and is one of the UK’s key economic statistical series.

Section Contents

Table 1.13 presents the estimated value of export orders of defence equipment and services.

Table 1.14 shows payments made for services consumed by MOD establishments overseas (referred to as Balance of Payments Trade in Services or BoP).

Key Points

Estimated UK identified defence export orders (Table 1.13)

  • Identified UK export orders of defence equipment and services were estimated to be just over £5.8 billion in 2010. This is in line with historic levels.

Balance of Payments: Trade in Services (Table 1.14)

  • In 2010, the MOD's estimated Balance of Payments for Trade in Services was just under £3.2 billion in deficit made up of £3.5 billion debits and over £0.3 billion credits. These figures are broadly similar with the 2009 figures.

Data Quality

A background quality report containing further information about the quality of methods and underlying data, along with the uses and limitation of these statistics can be found at: Background Quality Report - Trade Statistics