With a population of 8.2 million, Austria is a small but relatively dynamic EU member country offering export opportunities and an investment market for U.S. companies of all sizes. It tends to be overlooked as a place for business, mainly because of the large German market next door, with ten times the population. Austria offers many attractive features as an investment location, and recent Austrian governments have sought to increase that attractiveness through economic reforms and by playing up Austria’s historical and economic ties to the surrounding region.
Austria has a well-developed social market economy with a high standard of living in which the government has played an important role. For many years, the government and its state-owned industries conglomerate played a very important role in the Austrian economy. Starting in the early 1990s, the parts of this conglomerate collapsed economically and the group began to break apart. State-owned firms were reorganized to operate like private-sector businesses, and the government wholly or partially privatized many of them. Although the government's privatization work has been successful, some larger firms, utilities, and services are still partially or wholly owned and/or operated by government entities.
Austria enjoys a well-developed industrial base, as well as fully modern banking, transportation, services, and commercial facilities. At present, approximately 370 U.S. firms have subsidiaries, affiliates, franchisees, or licensees in Austria, of which about 150 have regional responsibilities for Central European, Eastern European, or Balkan countries. Austria, and Vienna in particular, faces growing competition for investment dollars from their Eastern neighbors, all of which have been EU members since May 2004; at the same time, the Austrian economy has profited enormously from ties to the booming markets in Central and Eastern Europe.
Austria's economy performed well in 2006 with a GDP of 320 billion USD, which indicates a real growth rate of 3.3 percent. This is the highest rate since 2000, and about half of a percentage point higher than that of the Euro area average. Growth is expected to ease to under 3 percent this year. The average per capita income of 38,631 USD is among the highest in the EU, and unemployment is low at 4.9 percent.
U.S. exports to Austria in 2006 amounted to 4.8 billion USD while U.S. imports from Austria were 8.5 billion USD, making a bilateral trade volume of 13,3 billion USD. The current weak dollar rate has thus far had no significant effect on Austrian exports to the U.S., in fact, with an increase of 15,5 % in 2006, Austrian positive net exports to the U.S. grew faster than in the three preceding years. This is due to the fact that the statistics chart existing relationships; the impact of the weak dollar has thus far served primarily to magnify the positive net exports and does not (yet) reflect behavior changes. After Germany and Italy, the United States is Austria's third most important trading partner.