Brazil trade balance stays positive at USD 3.9 bln in Oct, says gov’t

According to the Foreign Trade Secretariat of the Ministry of Economy, the Brazilian trade balance registered a surplus of US$3.9 billion in October.

A surplus happens when exports exceed imports. When the opposite happens, the result is a deficit.

According to the government, in October:

• exports totaled US$ 27.3 billion; and
• imports, US$ 23.4 billion.

In nominal terms, the balance is up 85.7% from the same month in 2021, when the balance surplus was US$ 2.1 billion. Compared to the daily average, which only considers working days, the increase was 100%.

Reasons

According to the undersecretary for Intelligence and Foreign Trade Statistics of the Ministry of Economy, Herlon Brandão, exports and imports grew in October 2022, both in volume and price.

The market sectors that stood out the most were:

• Agriculture, on the export side, with increased shipments of soybeans and corn;
• the extractive industry, on the import side, mainly because of fuel purchases.

Exports to China, Brazil’s leading trading partner, increased in October. The most popular products were beef, sugar, cotton, cellulose, and soybeans.

Brandão believes that Chinese demand for Brazilian products may increase again in the coming months, as it did in October, but this will be heavily dependent on the pace of economic activity in the Asian country. “Whether it will continue is premature given the troubled international scenario,” he said.

Year to date

From January to October this year, according to official data, the trade balance is positive at US$ 51.6 billion.

Such a value represents a drop of 11.8% in nominal terms compared to last year, when the surplus reached US$ 58.5 billion. However, in terms of the daily average, there was a drop of 11.7%.

According to the Ministry of Economy, for the year, exports totaled US$ 281 billion, and imports totaled US$ 229.3 billion, in rounded values.

Forecast for 2022

Last month, the Ministry of Economy revised downward the estimate for the trade balance in 2022.

According to the new projection, the balance will end the year with a positive balance of US$ 55.4 billion, less than the US$ 81.5 billion projected in June.

In March, expectations were even more optimistic – at the time, the government believed in a historical record, with the balance ending the year 2022 with an accumulated balance of US$ 111.6 billion.

Undersecretary Herlon Brandão said that the constant above-expected growth in imports and the deceleration in the prices of exported products, verified since July, contributed to the downward revision of the balance forecast.

Source: G1

To read the full original article, please go to: https://g1.globo.com/economia/noticia/2022/11/01/balanca-comercial-registra-saldo-positivo-de-us-39-bilhoes-em-outubro-diz-economia.ghtml

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