Percentage point

Opinion

20 per cent of GDP is all we spend on imports but nearly 70 per cent of that figure is earned by the UK exporting manufactured goods.

John Urwin (Production lines, The Engineer, June 13) may have a point when he says that 20 per cent of GDP is all we spend on imports.

But what he omits to mention is that nearly 70 per cent of that figure is earned by the UK exporting manufactured goods.

So unless he can find a way to substitute for that 70 per cent, maybe we still need manufacturing.

And most of that amount is earned by manufacturers that develop their own products, rather than by sub-contractors.

So not only do we need manufacturers, but we also need more to develop their own products because sub-contracting is steadily migrating to lower labour cost countries such as India and China.

Colin Mynott

Northampton