São Paulo – Brazilian foreign trade ran a USD 43.28 billion surplus from January to November, the highest amount since record-taking began in 1989. The November surplus was also a monthly record at USD 4.75 billion.
The data was made available by the Ministry of Industry, Foreign Trade and Services this Thursday (1). The government is expecting a USD 45 billion to USD 50 billion surplus by the end of the year, which would come as yet another all-time high – the current one, from 2016, is USD 46.4 billion.
Exports from Brazil reached USD 16.2 billion last month, averaging at USD 811 million in each of the month’s 20 business days. The average daily surplus is 17.5% higher than that of November 2015, and up 18.2% from the October average.
Imports totaled USD 11.46 billion, or USD 573.1 million per business day, down 9.1% from November 2015 and up 0.8% from October.
Year-to-date through November, exports amounted to USD 169.3 billion, or USD 739.3 million per business day – a 3.3% drop over the comparable period of last year. Average daily imports dropped by 22% to USD 550.3 million. Total imports through November stood at USD 126 billion.
Products
November saw exports climb 41.8% for finished goods and 21.3% for semi-finished goods, while foreign sales of basic goods slid 5.5% from November 2015. Top-selling items included refined sugar, automobiles, and electric motors and generators, in finished goods; iron and steel, raw sugar and timber in semi-finished goods; and the drop in basic goods sales was driven by weaker maize and soy exports.
Sales to the Middle East were up 25.8%, fueled by automobiles, sugar, iron ore, soy bran, raw soy oil, beef, cast iron pipes, livestock, chassis and engines, wood pulp and tractors.
Fuel and lubricant imports slid by 46.9%; capital goods imports fell by 22.4%; and consumer goods imports edged back by 0.8%. Semi-finished goods imports were up 1.2%.
Imports from the Middle East to Brazil fell by 30.4%, with the sharpest drops in aviation fuel, urea, natural gas, crude oil, calcium phosphate, lubricant oils, other hydrocarbons, aluminum waste, carboxylic acids, sulphur, printer ink and transmitters/receivers.
*With information from Agência Brasil. Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum