MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina's trade surplus soars with commodity prices

Argentina's trade surplus in February jumped 23.5% over a year ago reaching 982 million US dollars, but lower than expected because of a surge in imports according to the latest report from the Institute of Statistics and Census, Indec.

Argentina's trade surplus for 2008 has been estimated in 10.26 billion US dollars. Exports soared 45% over the same month a year ago reaching 5.2 billion US dollars while imports climbed 51% to 4.2 billion US dollars "The increase in value of exports was based mainly on higher prices (31%) and to a lesser extent volume (11%), while for imports volume increase was 37% and prices 10%", points out the release. Trade surplus for the two first months of the year totaled 2.15 billion US dollars compared to 1.23 billion a year ago which means an increase of 74.3%. Commodities prices exported by Argentina on average jumped 85%; manufactured goods from agriculture 45%; fuel and energy 35% and industrial goods 27%. The commodities with excellent performance were wheat, soy bean flour and pellets, corn, oil, soy beans, gasoline and beef in its different presentations. On the import side the volume increase included capital goods, 69%; intermediate goods, 55%; fuel and lubricants, 54%: consumer goods, 47%; automobiles, 42% plus spares and accessories for capital goods, 25%. A more detailed inventory shows that on import value the list was headed by aircrafts, transport equipment, telecommunications, mobile phones, soy beans for milling, agro chemicals, iron ore, automobile industry inputs, farm equipment and transport, according to Indec. China was the leading star having increased exports to Argentina in the first two months of 2008 by 65%, just over a billion US dollars of which 72% consumer goods in spite of efforts from local authorities to limit purchases from the leasing Asian economy.