São Paulo – The Brazilian trade balance remained in surplus in the third week of this month and also recorded a surplus in the month and year-to-date. According to data covering the period of June 15th to 21st and released this Monday (22th) by the Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade (MDIC), Brazil exported U$ 4.381 billion last week and imported US$ 3.816 billion, thus recording a surplus of US$ 565 million. In the month until the third week, Brazil exported US$ 13.630 billion and imported US$ 10.411 billion, with a surplus of US$ 3.219 billion.
According to data from the MDIC, until the third week of this month, Brazil exported US$ 973.6 million on average per business day, a drop of 4.9% over the performance of June 2014. This month, exports declined with basic goods and semi-finished and increased with manufactured products.
Basic goods declined 11.4% this month in comparison to June 2014 due to lower revenues with iron ore, pork and beef, soybean bran and coffee beans. Among semi-finished goods, the decline was of 5%, due especially to the drop of revenues with cast iron, ferro-alloys, hide, crude soybean oil, refined sugar and raw aluminum.
Among finished products, there was an increase of 6.5% in sales due to higher revenues with exports of oil rigs, taps and valves, non-frozen orange juice, oxides and hydroxides of aluminum, plastic polymers, freight vehicles, flat-rolled products, auto and auto parts.
Meanwhile, imports declined more than exports. According to data from the MDIC, Brazil imported US$ 743.2 million per day, on average, this month until Sunday, a figure that means a decline of 17.9% over the daily average of last year’s June. The products with the steepest drop in imports were fuel and lubricants with 37.4%; electronic devices (-20%), auto and auto parts (-16.4%) and mechanical equipment (-16.2%).
Year-to-date, the Brazilian trade balance registers a surplus of US$ 914 million. Until the third week of June of last year, the balance had a deficit of US$ 2.712 billion.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
