Brazil’s April trade surplus at its lowest in a decade, as imports soar to new record

Thursday, May 3rd 2012 - 03:00 UTC

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Meanwhile the Real is loosing ground and was trading at 1.92 to the US dollar

Brazil’s trade surplus narrowed to its smallest in a decade for the month of April as imports jumped to their highest level on record for that period. In April the trade surplus fell to 881 million dollars from a surplus of 2 billion in March and 1.86 billion a year earlier.

Imports were 18.69 billion in April, the highest for that month and above the 18.31 billion a year earlier. Exports fell to 19.57 billion in April from 20.91 billion in March and 20.17 billion a year earlier, according to the figures released by the Trade Ministry.

The local currency Real, which reached a 12-year high against the dollar last year, helped fuel a trade deficit for manufactured goods of 92.5 billion dollars in 2011. Brazil’s central bank has lowered the benchmark interest rate in six straight meetings to 9%, which contributed to a weakening the currency.

Since the end of February, the currency has declined 11% against the US dollar, the most of 16 major currencies. On Wednesday the Real declined 0.7% to 1.9209 per US dollar in mid afternoon trading.

In the first four months of the year, the trade surplus totalled 3.3 billion dollars. Nevertheless economists expect a trade surplus of 19.2 billion in 2012 and of 14.5 billion in 2013, according to an April 27 central bank survey.

Categories: Economy, Brazil.

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ChrisR
There is an old, but true, saying that goes 'you can't have your cake and eat it'.

Brazil will shortly find out how true this is when muscling the banks on interest rates, dropping rates for savers in general and risking capital flight into other markets / investments by the populace.
May 03rd, 2012 - 04:23 pm 0
row82
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May 04th, 2012 - 06:49 pm 0

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