Recent figures claim that exports to the fastest growing nations have doubled since the recession took hold.
According to statistics released by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), exports to the emerging nations of Brazil, India, China, Russia and South Africa (BRICS), reached £27.1 billion in 2012. In year of 2007, leading up to the recession, the figure was £12.7 billion. BRICS exports now account for 5.56 per cent of all UK exports, according to a report in freshbusinessthinking.com.
The figures suggest that Small, Medium and Enterprise (SME) businesses have been navigating through uncertainty by changing export strategy to suit the austere market. The figures have left some experts dumbfounded as they feared that the UK was being left behind in the international trade race to provide for BRICS nations.
Gerard Lyons, economic adviser to London mayor Boris Johnson told telegraph.co.uk that the export market was adapting, only slower than many had expected.
It just takes time to change. Small firms can't be jumping on planes the whole time, he said.
The figures came at the same time as the Trade Union Congress (TUC) warned that government policies were 'dragging down' the economy and said that the UK's export market was the second slowest of the world's seven leading economies, behind only Japan.
Lyons said that this was due in part to the UK's reliance on trade with Western economies, but underlined the fact that Britain was changing the way that it did business.
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