Tunisia’s foreign trade posted a 3.8% decline (at constant prices) in export until the end of July, 2019 and 6.2% in import, compared to the same period in 2018.
In terms of value, trade grew 17.7% for exports and 20.4% for imports, according to data released by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) on Monday.
In current values, they reached 26,703.4 million dinars (MD) in exports and 37,867.2 million in imports, posting a rise of 13.2% and 12.9%, respectively.
Excluding energy: prices increase 17.7% for exports and 19.5% for imports
During the first 7 months of 2019, Tunisia’s foreign trade excluding energy grew by 17.7% for exports and 19.5% for imports, compared to the first seven months of 2018.
In fact, energy prices posted 18.5% increase for exports and 26.2% for imports, compared to the same period last year.
At the end of July 2019, the country’s agricultural and agri-food exports dropped by 19.4%. The same applies to the exports of the mining and phosphate and derivatives sector, which fell 7.7%, the textiles, clothing and leather sector down 3.8% and the mechanical and electrical industries that went down 1.2%, while exports from the energy sector grew by 4.2%.
Regarding imports, the volume trend was marked in the first seven months of 2019 by a decrease of around 8.9% in the sector of mechanical and electrical industries, 7.6% for the textile, clothing and leather sector and 1.6% for imports from the agriculture and agri-food sector.
As for imports from the energy sector, they posted a slight increase of 0.9%.
