Indonesia logs trade surplus for 2nd consecutive month as export ratchets up

Source: Xinhua| 2019-04-15 16:56:38|Editor: xuxin
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JAKARTA, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia's trade performance registered a surplus for two consecutive months in March, helping to narrow deficit on the country's current account.

The national statistics bureau announced on Monday that the trade surplus touched 540 million U.S. dollars in March as exports' hike broke through rise of imports.

That ticked higher from 330 million U.S. dollars trade surplus in February, head of the bureau Kecuk Suhariyanto disclosed.

Shipment of products offshore drifted up 11.71 percent to 14.03 billion U.S. dollars in March from a month earlier while import ticked up 10.31 percent to 13.49 billion U.S. dollars, Suhariyanto said.

Buoyancy in global prices of scores of commodities such as rubber, copper and nickel, the major exported products from Indonesia, had factored to the hike on the country's exports, he cited.

"The increase of exports was contributed by prices of iron, metal, copper and rubber which stayed afloat," he told a press conference at the bureau headquarters.

The Indonesian authorities have striven to edge off import by way of applying higher tariffs, and to encourage exports by easing rules after the country's logged a bleak trade performance of a record high of 8.5 billion U.S. dollars deficit last year.

Experts have said that improving trade performance, which will help bringing down current account deficits, will give rooms to the central bank to commence applying stimulus on the country's economy.

In addition, the country's concurrent benign inflation and more-dovish -than-expected tone from the U.S. Federal Reserve on its rate policy this year, will also factor.

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