Trade surplus increases by €1bn

Ireland’s seasonally adjusted trade surplus jumped by 27%, or €1bn, in August to nearly €5bn, on the back of a record monthly export performance.

New CSO figures show the value of Irish exports in August amounted to just over €9.1bn — an 18% improvement on Aug 2011, and a 16% rise on July.

This helped boost the surplus to just over €4.9bn. The last time that figure was over the €4bn mark was Nov 2011.