Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Financial Services, Foreign trade , Investments

Estonia's exports and imports of both goods and services grew notably faster last year than in the euro area as a whole. The turnover of goods and services increased by less than 1% in the euro area, but by over 4% in Estonia. As exports of goods grew faster than imports, the deficit on the goods account narrowed to 0.8 billion euros. The surplus on services decreased slightly over the year to 1.6 billion euros.

Estonia was a net lender to the rest of the world again in 2016, as the outflow of capital exceeded the inflow by 0.4 billion euros. Capital mainly moved through portfolio investment, with the largest part of investments going into foreign securities and fund shares.

Estonia is one of the few member states of the European Union to owe less to other countries than is owed to it, and at the end of 2016 the rest of the world owed Estonia 21.5 billion euros, whereas Estonia's debt totaled 19 billion euros. This means that Estonia's external assets exceeded external liabilities by 2.5 billion euros. The same holds true also for Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Belgium and Germany, while the other European Union members have larger debts to the rest of the world than they have invested there.