April trade surplus slightly up in 2nd reading
Hungary had a €717.4 million trade surplus in April, slightly up from a preliminary 700.5 million surplus released on June 7, the Central Statistics Office (KSH) said in a second reading of data on Tuesday.
Both exports and imports rose faster in volume terms than in euros, and terms of trade improved from April 2012. Four-month exports were boosted by a 16% rise in road vehicle exports, which rose to just less than €3 billion.
April exports rose 13.7% in volume terms and rose 11.7% in euros to €6.858 billion from the same period a year earlier. Imports were up 10.5% in volumes and 7.6% in euros from April 2012 at €6.141 billion.
January-April trade surplus rose €334 million from a year earlier to €2.457 billion.
Four-month exports rose 3.1% in volume terms and were up 2.7% in euro terms on the year at €26.769 billion. Four-month imports rose 2.7% in volume terms and rose 1.6% in euros to €24.312 billion.
Calculated from forint-term trade, terms of trade improved 0.7% yr/yr in April and improved 0.9% in January-April. January-April export prices were hardly changed in forint terms year-on-year and forint-term import prices fell 1.1%. The forint weakened 1.1% to the euro and 2.2% to the US dollar in the twelve months to April, and it strengthened 1.7% to the euro and was hardly changed to the dollar in January-April from a year earlier.
Export rose in April after two months of year-on-year declines and import rose after dropping yr/yr in March. The increases came from a low base. Exports and imports followed a similar pattern in February-March 2012 but they continued to drop in April and started to increase only in May.
The rise of road vehicle exports, boosted by the Daimler plant that started production at the end of March 2012, accelerated and the drop of telecom and sound equipment exports slowed further in April, the figures suggest. January-April exports of the latter segment was down 8.9% yr/yr at €2.9 billion after contracting by more than one-fourt last year, affected by the closure of the plant of Finnish handset maker Nokia announced in February 2012.
January-April export volumes to other European Union members rose 2.8% yr/yr, including a 4.9% increase to the EU-15 countries and a 2.5% decrease to the new member states. Import volumes from the EU rose 0.8% in the period, including a 1.1% rise in the imports from the E-15 states and no change from the EU-12s.
Trade volume with extra-EU countries rose at a higher pace than that with the EU: exports rose 4.4% and imports rose 7.2%.
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