Trade balance for first week of February ended with surplus of US$1.160 billion

Brazil’s trade balance registered a US$1.166 billion surplus, and a total trade flow of US$8.151 billion in the first week of February 2020, resulting from exports worth US$4.656 billion and imports of US$3.495 billion. This information was released on Monday (10/02) by the Foreign Trade Secretariat (Secex) of the government’s economic department.

The cumulative total for the year to date is US$19.096 billion in exports and US$19.670 billion in imports, equalling a negative balance of US$575 million and a total trade flow of US$38.766 billion.

The following table shows the balance of trade data:

Analysis of the month

Average exports in the first week of February 2020 stood at US$931.1 million, compared with US$786.9 million in February 2019, signifying an 18.3% increase.  This is due to increased sales in three product categories: basic goods up 19.4% from US$ 397.0 million to US $ 473.8 million; semi-manufactured goods up 32.8% from US$97.7 million to US$129.7 million, and manufactured goods increasing 12.1%), from US$292.2 million to US$327.6 million.

The daily average for imports in the first week of February 2020 was US$ 699.1 million, up 10.8% year-on-year which equalled US$ 631.1 million. The increase was seen mainly for pharmaceuticals (+ 39.8%), plastics (+ 15.8%), mechanical equipment (+ 11.7%), fuels and lubricants (+ 7.0%), and electronic equipment (+ 6.1%).

There was a 4.9% decrease in February compared with the previous month due to the decrease in purchases of aircraft and parts (-41.7%), steel (-11.5%), mechanical equipment (-11.5%), electronic equipment (-7.7%), optical and precision instruments (-7.0%).

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