While Slovakia posted a foreign trade deficit year-on-year of €51.3 million in December 2013, overall exports from Slovakia rose by 7.9 percent on an annual basis to €4.673 billion in December 2013, the Slovak Statistics Office (ŠÚ) informed in a detailed report on March 11.
However, all together 2013 saw a foreign-trade surplus of €4.284 billion, €728 million more than in 2012. Exports for the entire year rose by 3.6 percent to €64.361 billion. Imports also ticked up - by 2.5 percent - to €60.077 billion. In 2013, Slovakia had its largest foreign trade surplus with Germany (€4.241 billion), followed by the Czech Republic (€2.527 billion), Poland €2.486 billion), Austria (€2.418 billion) and the United Kingdom (€2.340 billion).
Conversely, the largest deficits were measured in trade with South Korea (€5.074 billion), Russia (€3.601 billion), China (€2.732 billion), Japan (€677.9 million) and Taiwan (€420.1 million).
Exports to the EU went up by 2 percent year-on-year and accounted for 82.8 percent of all of the country's exports. The proportion increased further to 85.9 percent when it came to exports to OECD countries, with the year-on-year rise in this regard reaching 2.7 percent last year. Imports from EU countries swelled 0.7 percent on the year, making up 62.6 percent of all imports. Imports from OECD countries accounted for 63 percent of all exports following a rise of 2.4 percent on an annual basis.
In January 2014, Slovakia posted a foreign-trade surplus of €324.2 million, which was €39.7 million less than the surplus recorded in the same month of last year, the TASR newswire reported. Overall exports were at €5.229 billion in January in what was a rise of 8.3 percent on the year. Imports swelled by 9.9 percent to reach €4.904 billion.
(Source: ŠÚ, TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
