Belarus’ foreign trade 55.1% up in January-August

In January-August, Belarus’ foreign trade in goods and services reached $55.3 billion, up 55.1% over the same period of 2007, the National Statistics Committee of Belarus told BelTA. Belarus’ export went up by 55.4% to $26.6 billion, import grew 54.8% to $28.7 billion. In January-August, Belarus posted a $2097.7 million worth of deficit in foreign trade. In 2008, the foreign trade deficit is projected at the level of $1400-1420 million. The deficit of the merchandise trade amounted to $3262,2 million while the surplus of the foreign trade in services reached $1164,5 million. The National Statistics Committee attributed the increase in cost values of the foreign trade to rising average prices for exported and imported products. In comparison with January-August 2007 the average export prices went up by 48.1%, average import prices — 33%. The actual volume of exports rose by 6.5%, imports — 17.1%. Over the eight months of 2008, the foreign trade in goods totalled $51 billion, with export as high as $23.7 billion, import — $27.3 billion. The exports of goods in actual prices increased by 57.7% in comparison with the same period of last year, imports of goods— 55.8%. Export and import operations with intermediate products (energy products, raw materials, components) were the main source of the foreign trade deficit. Belarus imported $20.9 billion worth of intermediate products (1.6 times up on January-August 2007) and exported $17.4 billion worth of intermediate products (1.7 times up). The deficit of the foreign trade in energy products amounted to $1857,5 million, $872,9 million over the same point of 2007. The foreign trade in investment products has improved. The surplus of the foreign trade in investment products went up from $273,7 million registered in January-August 2007 to $530,9 million in January-August 2008. The rise is attributed to a larger cost value of exported tractors and truck tractors ($327,9 million up), trucks ($150,9 million up), machines and mechanisms for harvesting and threshing agricultural crops ($127.8 million up). Apart from that, Belarus considerably reduced the import of farm machines. In January-August 2008, the surplus of Belarus’ foreign trade in foods increased by 42.9 million in comparison with January-August 2007 to make up $140.2 million. The value of exported food exceeded the import thanks to the larger export of beef, cheese and curd cheese, dry and condensed milk, sugar, butter, pork, tinned fish. Meanwhile, the deficit of the foreign trade in non-foods amounted to $659,6 million, with the import of cars, medications, footwear, synthetic detergents, sanitary tissue products, TV sets and freezers rising a lot. Over the eight months of 2008 the foreign trade in services reached $4,487 billion, 35.3% up on the same period of 2007. The export of services swelled by 36.7% to $2.826 billion, import — 32.9% up to $1.661 billion.

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