I have looked at whether the UK’s creative industries are net contributors to the nation’s wealth i.e. Do we import more than we export? The music industry on the BBC are both very proud of their export data, but discovering important facts is much more difficult. Here are my notes and links, …
I wrote a blog article based on an answer to written parliamentary question asked on my behalf by my MP from which I extracted the balance of payments data for SIC 90. In five years out of nine the industry was in deficit, the final year 2016 there was an extraordinarily large surplus and so it seemed important to try and collect data for the succeeding years. As with so many of my projects, I did not manage to do this but once again the creative industry is claiming the need for support to boost their position is export champions.
I also note that having asked the BBC twice for data on how much they spend in foreign currency acquiring intellectual property they have not answered despite these questions being framed as a Freedom of Information requests. I should really have another go. I expect the trade in movie income to dominate these numbers.
UK music post their trade report on their news page, claiming £4 billion in export revenue. I doubt that ONS have these numbers yet. I expect the trade in movie income to dominate these numbers.
I queried google, q=uk+balance+of+trade+sic+90, and wrote to ONS for the time series.