IN CONFIDENCE
2-140
Overseas Trade Board
NORTH AMERICA
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It was considered important that recent improvements in export performance to the US (the UK's largest single market) be maintained. In volume terms there was scope for expansion market share was below the UK's global average and there were opportunities for all types of firms. In order to seize these opportunities the Branch had bid for extra staff resources to enable them to undertake more initiative work on a sectoral basis with committed exporters.
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It was suggested that ERS/MPS might be absorbing a disproportionate share of the resources of some US posts. FCO are considering how to handle cases more effectively to release resources.
MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA
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The in order
The Middle East differed from many other markets in the nature of the problems posed for export promotion. The big expansion of the 1970s had tailed off considerably, although UK market share had recently increased and prospects now appeared to be improving. Demand on the market branch had not reduced except in parts of N Africa, where staff resources had been reduced. Staff effort devoted to Middle East markets was high both at home (where highish proportions of initiative work were done) and overseas, and some further slight reduction in the staffing of the market branch might be possible.
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The area
posed problems for commercial department staffing it was for example expensive to employ local staff in Saudi Arabia, and there were possibly more UK based staff there than was usual.
other markets however the provision of locally employed staff seemed relatively generous. In the Middle East as a whole there was an unusually high number of business visitors to Posts which imposed a heavy burden of demand-led work.
LATIN AMERICA AND AUSTRALASIA
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Latin American markets were still affected by debt problems and revival was uncertain. Australasia had been depressed by low commodity prices but remained a major market. There was a long history of declining market shares in all areas, although this trend had recently been reversed in Latin America. If credit cover problem: in Brazil were solved there could be a revival of interest in that market which would put pressure on resources. The Latin American markets took a higher proportion of resources than their importance appeared to merit but this reflected the difficulties of doing busines: there and the fragmentation of the area.
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Despite limited prospects in these regions (at least in the short term) there was little scope for reducing market branch staff.
The selective marketing initiative had generated worthwhile responsive activity in certain markets, but otherwise little initiative work was done except for Brazil and staff resources allocated to the lower potential markets in Central America and the Cone were already tight.
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