June goods exports down 3.4% YoY, imports 7.6%; deficit swells to €1.5B
In June of this year, the trade deficit was €2.122 billion, or €496 million smaller than a year earlier. Without the fuels and lubricants component, the deficit swelled by €136 million to €1.522B.
Portugal’s exports and imports of goods in June were down a nominal 3.4% and 7.6% on the same month a year earlier, marking the third month in a row that they fell, the National Statistics Institute (INE) announced on Wednesday, in a release in which it also revised the full-year results for 2022, to growth in exports of 23.2% and in imports of 31.7%.
In May exports and imports had fallen 7.3% and 4.2% respectively on a year earlier. In the second quarter as a whole they were down 4.9% and 6.1% on the same period a year earlier.
INE also presented the definitive results for last year, which due to additional information obtained in the meantime “present revisions of +0.3 percentage points in both flows compared to the preliminary results released in June” – so resulting in final annual rates of increase of 23.2% in exports and 31.7% in imports.
According to INE’s definitive data for 2022, the trade balance deficit for the full year totalled €31.083 billion, corresponding to an increase of €11.556 billion over the previous year and reflecting a decrease of 4.9 percentage points in the coverage rate of imports by exports, to 71.6%.
In June of this year, the trade deficit was €2.122 billion, or €496 million smaller than a year earlier. Without the fuels and lubricants component, the deficit swelled by €136 million to €1.522 billion.
Among exports and imports in June, the 41.0% drop in exports and 47.4% drop in imports of fuels and lubricants stand out, “largely reflecting the fall in prices of these products” – without these items, exports were up 1.1% on the year and imports up 2.7%. But INE also highlights a drop in exports of industrial supplies (down 10.8%) and an increase in those of machinery and other capital goods (up 14.0%).
Unit value indices (reflecting actual prices), on the other hand, recorded a decrease of 4.8% for exports and 9.1% for imports, against year-on-year declines of 2.3% and 6.5% respectively in May.
Among imports, INE highlights “the decrease in fuels and lubricants (-47.4%), mainly from Brazil and Angola, reflecting decreases in prices, but also a base effect, given that in June 2022 there had been significant increases in imports of these products, anticipating the shortages and price increases expected by the conflict in Ukraine.”
Imports of industrial supplies also recorded a sharp decline, down 8.8%, while those of transportation equipment – mainly passenger cars – were up 15.9%.
In the second quarter, analysing the year-on-year change of trade with Portugal’s main partner countries in 2022, the decreases in exports and imports of goods to and from the US (down 37.4% and 26.7%, respectively) stand out, but so do imports from Brazil (down 45.8%).
