São Paulo – Brazil registered a negative result of US$ 1.475 billion in the trade balance during the third week of January. According to the data for the period released this Monday (20) by the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade (MDIC), Brazil exported US$ 3.772 billion between January 13 and 19, but imported US$ 5.247 billion. For the year’s total, the trade balance deficit adds up to US$ 2.049 billion.
In the third week of the year, Brazil exported a daily average of US$ 754.4 million, an increase by 4.2% in relation to the second week. In the period, exports of basic products increased by 20.1%, semi-manufactured products decreased by 20.2%, and manufactured products decreased by 3.1% in relation to the previous week.
For imports, on the other hand, the daily average reached US$ 1.049 billion, an increase by 30.1% in relation to the second week of January, due to the increase in spending with fuels and lubricants, mechanical equipment, vehicles and auto parts and steelwork products.
When comparing this month’s accumulated total with January 2013, exports increased by 1.5%. Basic products shipments had an increase by 12%, driven by crude oil, soy, rice, aluminum ore and soy chaff. Exports of manufactured goods decreased by 8.5%, due to the sales performance of refined sugar, ethanol, auto parts, cars and frozen orange juice. Semi-manufactured products showed a decrease by 3.9% in exports, due to the drop in sales of crude aluminum, iron and steel semi-manufactured products, semi-manufactured gold products and crude sugar.
In the month and year’s accumulated sum, imports had a decrease by 0.2% in comparison to January 2013. Main products to show decreases were fuels and lubricants (drop by 41.7%), pharmaceutical products (10.2%), optics and precision instruments (4.4%) and rubber. The accumulated figures for the year show that Brazil exported US$ 8.841 billion and imported US$ 10.89 billion.
*Translated by Silvia Lindsey
