'£12bn squandered' by non-exporters

FIRMS throughout the South-East are missing out on almost £12bn of extra revenue because so few cash in on their export potential, business leaders said.

Business rivals the CBI and the Institute of Directors do not always see eye to eye, but they do agree that £11.7bn more could be made by 2005, about a third extra, if 3,000 more companies in the region began exporting and those that do exported more.

The CBI and IoD are co-operating to help increase the number of exporters who do about £24bn of business overseas in manufactured goods, and £10m in services.

The employers' organisations are backing the South East International Trade Strategy, a new industry-Government initiative to help more beginners start exporting and existing exporters to lift their overseas sales revenue.

Export sales offer an additional income stream to help companies through the recession, yet fewer than one in 10 of the South-East's 255,000 VAT-registered businesses export anything. A quarter of the firms do 97% of the region's export business.

'There are lots of small-to-medium-sized businesses in the South-East who have innovative products, competitively priced,' said Bryan Davies, head of a regional business grouping, the International Trade Forum for the South East.

'One problem is that even go-ahead firms lack knowledge of overseas markets and the logistics of exporting,' added Davies, who is also a board member of the South East England Development Agency. 'The South East International Trade Strategy will help more firms to crack the exports nut, for example by making it simpler to get access to joined-up help from central Government and regional trade promotion services.'