Bras\u00edlia \u2013 The Brazilian trade balance closed the first month of the year at a US$ 4.035 billion deficit, the worst monthly result since the start of the historical series in 1993. In the past, the weakest result had been a US$ 1.7 billion deficit in December 1996. The January 2013 deficit is three times higher than the US$ 1.3 billion deficit recorded in January 2012. The reasons were a high import volume and declining sales to Brazil\u2019s leading trade partners. <\/p>\n
The country\u2019s imports amounted to US$ 20.003 billion, an all-time high for the month of January, and exports stood at US$ 15.968 billion. The figures were released this Friday (1st) by the Brazilian Ministry of Development, Industry and Foreign Trade. Brazilian imports were up 14.6% from January last year and 3.9% from December.<\/p>\n
January-on-January, imports from the United States were up. Imports of gasoline, cargo vehicles, railway vehicles, engines and electric generators, aircraft, fuel oils, and other items were up 32.1%. From the Middle East, Brazil imported oil, chemicals and appliances, up 27.2%, and imports from Africa were up 21.2%, including oil, gas, and cashew nut. January-on-December, imports of fuels and lubricants were up 55.7%.<\/p>\n
Exports were down 1.1% January-on-January, and down 26.5% January-on-December. The former decline was driven by purchases of oil (-69.5%), coffee beans (-16.2%), soya bran (-11.9%), tobacco leaves (-7.1%), copper ore (-8.9%) and poultry (-4.5%). The decline was mostly due to basic items, considering that manufactured and semi-manufactured goods exports were up 6.6% and 1%, respectively. Exports of basic goods were down 5.9%.<\/p>\n
According to the ministry, in the last 12 months there was a drop in sales to the main target markets of Brazilian exports. Sales to the USA plummeted 19.6% year-on-year, due to decreased purchase of crude oil, wood pulp, auto parts, vehicle engine parts, coffee bean, semi-manufactured iron and steel products, engines, electric generators and compressors.<\/p>\n
Trade with China was down 5.8% due to falling sales of pharmaceuticals, vehicle engine parts, plastics, frozen orange juice, and auto parts. Exports to Latin America and the Caribbean were down 5% and exports to the Mercosur were down 0.1%. Argentina was the main contributor to the decline in trade with the Latin American bloc, with a 2.3% reduction in imports of tractors, tyres, cardboard, vehicle engines, cargo vehicles, and pumps and compressors. <\/p>\n
Markets to which Brazilian exports increased were Eastern Europe (up 50.9%), Middle East (up 25.5%), European Union (up 9.1%) and Africa (up 2.6%).<\/p>\n
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Brazil, rising imports and dipping exports led to a US$ 4 billion deficit during the month. Purchases from the United States, Middle East and Africa were up January-on-January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2315,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43851","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-economy"},"wps_subtitle":"In Brazil, rising imports and dipping exports led to a US$ 4 billion deficit during the month. Purchases from the United States, Middle East and Africa were up January-on-January.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43851\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/anba.com.br\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}