Slovakia’s foreign trade posted a surplus of €305.9 million in April of this year, which was €242.9 million lower than the figure recorded in April 2013, the Slovak Statistics Office (ŠÚ) announced on July 9.
Total exports of goods from Slovakia in April 2014 went down by 3.2 percent year-on-year to €5.440 billion, while total imports increased by 1.2 percent to €5.134 billion. For the period between January-April 2014,
foreign trade posted a surplus of €1.529 billion; which was a reduction of €236.9 million y-o-y.
Overall exports of goods from Slovakia between January and April
amounted to €21.492 billion, recording a y-o-y increase of 3.6 percent. In
terms of its most relevant business partners, the volume of exports from Slovakia to EU countries increased by 4 percent and represented 84.1 percent of all exports. Exports to OECD countries increased by 4.4 percent and made up 87.1 percent of all exports.
Slovakia imported goods worth €19.963 billion, an increase of 5.2 percent y-o-y, the TASR newswire quoted the ŠÚ. Imports from the EU went up by 5.8 percent and represented 62.6 percent of overall imports. Imports from OECD countries went down by 1.1 percent, equalling 61.2 percent of total imports.
In terms of figures with respect to individual trading partners, the largest surpluses in the first four months of this year were recorded with Germany (€2.011 billion), the United Kingdom (€918.7 million), Poland (€811 million), the Czech Republic (€708.7 million), Austria (€707.9 million), France (€556.4 million), Italy (€361.4 million), Hungary (€353.5 million) and the Netherlands (€278.7 million). Conversely, the largest deficits were with South Korea (€1.546 billion), Russia (€1.252 billion), China (€1.01 billion), Japan (€209.7 million), Malaysia (€120.2 million), Taiwan (€114.2 million) and Ukraine (€103.3 million).
Slovakia's foreign trade in May recorded a surplus of €464.7 million, which was a drop of €147.8 million on an annual basis. Overall exports of goods from Slovakia reached €5.512 billion in May, recording a year-on-year drop of 2.7 percent. Total imports went down by 0.1 percent y-o-y to stand
at €5.047 billion.
In the first five months of 2014, the country's foreign trade posted a surplus of €1.994 billion - a reduction of €384.7 million y-o-y, TASR quoted the ŠÚ. Overall exports over the same period increased by 2.3 percent y-o-y to €27.004 billion, while overall imports went up by 4.1 percent to €25.010 billion.
It may be expected that the trade balance this year will again reach a high surplus, the SITA newswire quoted economic analysts saying. Unlike last year, however, imports could also be supported by recovering domestic demand which raises the question of whether the annual surplus will reach similar levels as last year. In 2013, Slovakia’s foreign trade showed a record-high surplus of nearly €4.3 billion, according to the updated figures of the Statistics Office.
(Source: TASR, SITA)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
