São Paulo – The Brazilian trade balance surplus was US$ 627 million last week, as a result of exports of US$ 4.744 billion, with a daily average 0.4% below that of the first week of April, and imports of US$ 4.117 billion, with reduction of 7.6% in the same comparison.
With this, the trade balance surplus in the month rose to US$ 938 million, the difference from US$ 9.509 billion and imports of US$ 8.571 billion. In the daily average, there was reduction of 2.8% in foreign sales as against April 2012 and 8.3% in purchases. The surplus, however, grew 113.4% in the same comparison.
The result has not yet been enough to revert the trade balance deficit accumulated in the year, which is at US$ 4.218 billion, resulting from US$ 60.345 billion in shipments abroad and purchases on the foreign market of US$ 64.563 billion. From January up to last week, exports dropped 2% in the daily average as against the same period last year, and imports rose 8.6% in the same comparison.
In the two weeks of April, sales of manufactured products dropped 5.3%, mainly due to aircraft, fuel oil, land-levelling machinery, plastic polymers, engine parts and pneumatic equipment. Shipments of basic items dropped 1.8%, mainly in the case of fuel oil, cotton, wheat, pork, tobacco and soy chaff.
Exports of party manufactured products grew 2.3%, boosted by copper cathodes, sugar in bulk, gold in partly manufactured form, leather and wood pulp.
On the other hand, there were reductions in imports of fuels and lubricants (69.9%), copper and its works (32.6%) and aircraft and parts (8.6%).
*Translated by Mark Ament
