Brazil’s trade balance: Second week of February sees US$ 684 million surplus

Brazil’s trade balance registered a US$ 684 million surplus and reached US$ 6.941 billion in total trade during the second week of February. Exports reached US$ 3.812 billion while imports registered US$ 3.129 billion. The data, released on Monday February 17th, was published by the Foreign Trade Secretariat of Brazil’s Ministry of the Economy (Secex / ME). So far in February exports totaled US$ 8.411 billion and imports US$ 6.624 billion, meaning that currently there is a surplus of US$ 1.787 billion and total traded goods at US$ 15.035 billion.

Analysis of the week

Exports’ daily averages during the second week reached US$ 762.4 million, 17.1% below the daily average registered in the first week, which reached US$ 919.7 million. The drop is a result of decreases in all three product categories: basic goods, manufactured goods and semi-manufactured goods. Basic goods saw a -5.9% drop, from US$ 464.5 million to US$ 437.3 million, driven by lower iron ore, chicken, beef and pork meat, copper ore, tobacco and raw coffee beans. Manufactured goods fell 22.6%, from US$ 326.7 million to US$ 252.8 million, mainly due to fuel oils, flexible iron or steel tubes, gasoline, centrifuges and devices for filtering or purifying, pumps, compressors and fans. Semi-manufactured products fell the most proportionately, down 43.8%, from US$ 128.6 million to US$ 72.3 million, on account of semi-manufactured iron / steel, ferro-alloys, cellulose, gold in semi-manufactured forms and raw sugar.

On imports, there was a 10.5% fall in the same comparison. The second week average reached US$ 625.7 million, compared to the first week’s daily average of US$ 699.1 million. The decrease is mainly explained by the drop in spending on electrical and electronic equipment, pharmaceuticals, motor vehicles and parts, fuels and lubricants, filaments and synthetic and artificial fibers.

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