The trade balance deficit narrowed by 424.6 million dinars (-22.4%) at the end of February to 1.9 billion dinars, compared to 2.3 billion during the first two months of 2020, the National Institute of Statistics (INS) announced Wednesday.
Over the two months of the current year, exports saw a decline of 10.1% to 6.8 billion dinars. Similarly, imports dropped 12% to 8.7 billion dinars. The coverage rate has thus gained 1.7 points to 78.3% against 76.6% at the end of February 2020.
The decline observed in exports during the first two months of the year concerned the sectors of energy (-56.4%), mining, phosphates and derivatives (-43.9%), food industries (-9.1%), textiles-clothing and leather (-8%) and mechanical and electrical industries (-4.2%).
As for the drop in imports, it is due to the regression recorded in the imports of capital goods (-15.1%), raw materials and semi-products (-10.5%), consumer goods (-6.6%) and energy of (-33.9%) under the effect of the decrease of the country’s purchases of refined products (696.3 MD against 829.7 MD) and natural gas (163.5 MD against 500.5 MD).
The trade balance deficit remains largely explained by the deficit recorded with certain countries, such as China (-869.4 MD), Turkey (-392.4 MD), Russia (-252.3 MD), Algeria (-140 MD) and Italy (-87.7 MD).
On the other hand, the balance of trade in goods comes out in surplus with other countries, mainly France (710.3 MD), Germany (254.3 MD) and Libya (273.1 MD).
The results show that the trade balance deficit excluding energy narrowed to 1 billion dinars.
Indeed, the deficit of the energy balance stands at -868.5 MD (45.8% of the total deficit) against -1.15 billion dinars during the same period in 2020.
The results show that the deficit of the trade balance excluding energy is reduced to 1 billion dinars.
