Why is it significant?
Our
future success depends on competing on quality and know-how, rather than cost
alone, so an assessment of trade performance in selected sectors is one way to
judge whether the UK has a comparative advantage in knowledge intensive
activities.
How does the UK perform?
For the last 20 years, the UK has experienced an upward trend in the share of exports in knowledge based goods.Twenty per cent of all its exports being accounted for by knowledge based goods (Chart 5.4.1)
The
UK’s performance in terms of knowledge based services is equally impressive
with over 50% of UK exports in the service sector being classified as knowledge
intensive, higher than for any of our major competitors (Chart
5.4.2).