Trade Balance Indonesia: Unexpected Deficit in July 2017
Contrary to expectations Indonesia posted a trade deficit in July 2017. The nation's Statistics Agency (BPS) announced on Tuesday (15/08) that Southeast Asia's largest economy experienced a USD $271.2 million trade deficit last month, the country's first deficit in 19 months.
Data are rather distorted - both on a year-on-year (y/y) and month-on-month (m/m) basis - because the Ramadan and Idul Fitri holiday fell in June this year. Hence, a big jump in imports and exports were detected in July 2017.
Indonesian exports surged 41.1 percent (y/y) to USD $13.62 billion (exceeding expectations), while imports jumped 54.0 percent (y/y) to USD $13.89 billion (exceeding expectations even more).
BPS Head Suhariyanto commented on the data saying the modest July deficit was largely due to a big deficit in the nation's oil & gas balance (USD $604 million), while the country posted a USD $332.9 million non-oil and gas trade surplus. Especially imports of raw materials (+40.8 percent m/m) and capital goods (+62.6 percent m/m) were quite significant.
Regarding exports, shipments of non-oil and gas remained the main contributor with 91.37 percent of total July exports, consisting of the processing industry sector (75.18 percent), mining (13.84 percent) and agriculture (2.35 percent).
Meanwhile, BPS also said it had revised up the June trade surplus to USD $1.67 billion (from USD $1.63 billion previously). Indonesia's June exports were revised to USD $11.66 billion, while imports were revised to USD $9.99 billion.
