Kentucky Export Initiative officials are encouraging businesses throughout the Commonwealth to consider exporting their products.
KEI Project Manager Morgan Pierstorff said exports are a growing portion of the commonwealth’s economy, and although just three percent of Kentucky companies export, they totaled $22 billion in sales in 2012.
“Kentucky has consistently ranked second in US States in export growth,” she said. “Nationally in total volume we’re more around 19th. The last numbers we had in for August September is about 11.3 percent. We’re going to hit it looks like another record year for exporting in the state of Kentucky.”
Traveling with Pierstorff on behalf of the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce was former governor Martha Layne Collins. She said K-E-I and its many partners are ready to help companies interested in exporting with their questions.
“It could be a solution to a financial problem or solutions to employee problems, I mean as far as training and that kind of thing,” Collins said. “So there’s lots of ways to help, if we could just find them.”
Murray-Calloway County Chamber of Commerce President Aaron Dail said companies should consider exporting especially with upcoming opportunities for better transportation of goods.
“I-69 and the Panama Canal are literally just two giant momentous occasions,” he said. “When they merge all of a sudden it’s going to be who’s first out of the gate to make sure that they’re set up for that. It’s a perfect storm and a perfect wave about to crest, and we just need to be ready as a community in our region to embrace that.”
The widened Panama Canal is set to open in 2015 and development continues on the western Kentucky I-69 corridor.
