The tragedy is that visible trade with industrialized countries was not favourable.

British invisible foreign earnings from financial services were the largest in the world and for long had made up any deficit on visible trade.

Over the 1960s the issue became more stark as the underlying position of visible trade worsened.

A flat performance by exports and an increase in imports pushed the visible trade gap up from just under £6.5bn to just over £7bn.

However trading was subdued with better than expected trade figures showing a £3.3bn visible trade deficit having little effect.

The main reason: a boom in Japanese travel abroad, which does not affect the visible trade balance but shows up in the current account.

Though the invisible trade surplus has been marked down, there was encouraging news for the Government yesterday on the visible trade deficit.

The visible trade balance, which refers to physical goods and excludes data from the dominant services sector, is forecast to hold steady at £8.8bn.

The current account surplus has fallen nearly twice as fast as the visible trade surplus.

In some years, arms and related sales to Saudi Arabia have been worth half of Britain's total visible trade with the kingdom.

Although imports outstrip exports by about 100:1, the visible trade gap is more than offset by earnings from tourism and financial services.

The balance on visible trade and that on invisible trade together are known as the Balance on current account.

The phrase itself dates from the late 19th century, when tariffs - rather than other, less visible trade barriers - were the weapons of choice for protectionists.

The most visible trade barrier is the tariff, but trade liberalization is much more than negotiations on tariff rates.

It expects a smaller invisibles surplus than before, but the forecasters are a lot more optimistic about visible trade: exports are booming.

This represents 12.6 of the world's total invisible trade and significantly for the UK, invisibles contributed £13 billion more than visible trade earnings.

And in non-oil visible trade - goods and commodities - the nation has run a persistent and expanding deficit in recent years.

The accounting measure that really matters, however, is not the visible trade deficit, but the balance of payments current account deficit (CAD).

For example, the division of the UK's balance on visible trade between the EC and the rest of the world provides this kind of contrast.

A noticeable feature of Table 1.2 is the difference between the visible trade balance with the EC compared to that of the rest of the world.

It is customary therefore to focus upon a narrower trade related concept than the balance of visible trade to distinguish the CU effect of membership.

Visible trade recorded imports and exports of physical goods (entries for trade in physical goods excluding services is now often called the merchandise balance).

Another cause for worry about higher interest rates emerged early yesterday when August trade data for Britain showed a record visible trade deficit of more than $:1.5 billion.

A visible trade deficit where a nation is importing more physical goods than it exports (even if this is balanced by the other components of the current account.)

The growing integration of dispersed world manufacturing output calls for closer transport links, since visible trade requires the physical transfer of either commodities or finished or semi-finished goods.