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EU Transfers and Greece’s Real Exchange Rate: A Naked Eye View 305the 1980-81 average to the 1999-00 average, Greek imports rose faster thantrading partners’ imports. The difference was not big 30 but what is striking isthat it should happen in the context of relative growth figures such as thosejust quoted. 31 At the same time, the price of Greek exports relatively to tradingpartners’ exports has fallen or at best not risen between the early 1980sand the most recent years (Table 6-9, column 6). 32Inferior performance in terms of export volume, combined with falling ornon-rising relative price, points to laggard demand growth as the dominantinfluence in Greek exportables (eclipsing supply shifts). There are a numberof considerations which can reconcile this with faster GDP growth abroad.Non-price factors —quality, marketing etc.— and high vulnerability of Greektradeables to competition from industrialising countries can be cited. Anadditional point of some importance is the phasing out of protection in theyears 1987-92. Tariffs on imports were reduced by an average of 8.6 percentagepoints over all goods imports (Georgacopoulos, 1993) and subsidiesto exports by 15.6 percentage points (Maroulis, 1992).Whatever the reason, a demand drift away from Greek goods and services(in the aggregate) as a dominant factor seems unmistakeable. Clearly it exertedan influence towards real depreciation. This is an important point to retain.Turn to the autonomous items: cross-border income flows and privatetransfers. The relevant data from the National Accounts are set out in Table6-10. Private transfers (in the shape of emigrants’ remittances) have been verysubstantial in Greece’s balance of payments accounts for a very long time. Onincomplete data, the inflow at the near end could be 0.6 of a percentage pointof GDP higher than in 1980-81. But net income flows declined by about thesame amount. The combined change is clearly negligible. Settlements data,however, suggest that the net change in the autonomous items was negative.While, as noted earlier (footnote 18), individual current account items ona settlements basis are subject to discontinuity problems, this does not applyto emigrants’ remittances: they show little change between the two biennia30. When excess car imports, as computed in Table 6-5 in Step Three, are excluded, thetwo bottom rows of Table 6-9, column (3) become 103.7 and 102.2. There is no case for excludingexcess oil imports because the phenomenon was shared with other countries.31. The aggregation of goods and services risks creating misleading artefacts about volumechange in the aggregate entity because the much faster increase in the price of services givesrise to substantially different price weights, depending on the base year chosen. Goods andservices were therefore separated on the Greek side and reaggregated with weights from somealternative years. It made no significant difference.32. The wording is hedged, the statistical evidence being somewhat hazy because the seriesstarts only in 1983 and is subject to a major discontinuity. Effectively, though, the evidence ismore emphatic than it looks because services, which rise faster in price on account of lowerproductivity growth than in goods, have a high share in Greek exports.