WELLINGTON, Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- Spending by international visitors helped push New Zealand's trade surplus, including goods and services, to 4.2 billion NZ dollars (2.75 billion U.S. dollars) for the year ended June 2018, the country's statistics department Stats NZ said on Tuesday.
"Visitors to New Zealand spent almost twice as much as New Zealanders spent on their overseas visits," international statistics senior manager Peter Dolan said in a statement.
New Zealand's exports and imports of services have increased this year, repeating a pattern generally seen in the past decade. New Zealand exports of services, which were 31 percent of total exports, reached a peak of 24.8 billion NZ dollars in 2018, up almost 2 billion NZ dollars from 2017, Dolan said.
Imports of services, which were 25 percent of total imports, reached a peak of 19 billion NZ dollars, up 1.2 billion NZ dollars from 2017, he said.
"Export of services account for approximately a third of New Zealand's total exports, so although we have a goods deficit our overall trade balance is in surplus," Dolan said.
