JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesia booked a slightly bigger than expected trade surplus in April of $3.56 billion, as the country saw smaller-than-estimated imports, data from the statistics bureau showed on Wednesday.
A Reuters poll of economists had expected a surplus of $3.30 billion. Indonesia saw a surplus of $4.47 billion in March.
Southeast Asia’s largest economy has been reporting a merchandise trade surplus every month since May 2020, but the surplus has been narrowing recently amid weaker exports.
Exports from the resource-rich country have been hurt for more than a year by declining commodity prices and weakening global trade.
In April, exports rose 1.72% from a year earlier to $19.62 billion, below the 4.57% expected by economists polled by Reuters. Despite coming in below forecast, April’s export expansion was Indonesia’s first in 11 months.
The value of coal shipments fell an annual 19.26% in April to $2.61 billion, even though export volumes rose, due to the impact of falling global coal prices. Coal is Indonesia’s biggest export.
Imports rose 4.62% to $16.06 billion, compared with economists’ prediction of an 8.69% annual increase.
(Reporting by Gayatri Suroyo and Ananda Teresia; Editing by John Mair and Gerry Doyle)
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