Europe

Commonwealth Countries of Europe: Few Facts

There are 3 Commonwealth Countries in the European region. All of them have been members of the WTO since 1995. All the countries rank high in the Human Development Index developed by the UNDP.

The trade to GDP ratio pointing towards the openness of trade (export & import of goods and services) of the specific countries shows Malta at 163.3% while UK is at 55.3%. The Average Trade-GDP ratio is 104.8% and variation is of 52.06%.

GDP growth rates of these countries vary from 2.4% to 3.8% and major contribution to the economy is from service sector being above 70% of the GDP. Industrial sector too contributes between 20 – 26 % in all the countries.

Exports from the countries of these regions is mostly petroleum products and fuels, chemicals, machinery and transportation equipments, manufactured products, food, beverages, tobacco and cigarettes. Imports are mostly of machinery and transportation equipments, manufactures, fuel, food and consumers goods. While Cyprus and Malta have low share in world total exports of merchandise (0.01% and 0.02% respectively) and world total export of services (0.25% and 0.07% respectively), United Kingdom’s share in world exports of merchandise is 3.67% and export of services is 8.32%.

Table 1: WTO, Trade-GDP Ratio and HDI Status of the
European Commonwealth Members

^{*the ratio is taken for the period of 2003-05 unless otherwise mentioned.}