Angola, China and Brazil: markets sinking Portuguese exports – publico

 
         

                 

                         
                     

                         

                 

 
 

Angola, China, and Brazil, followed by the United States, accounted for a drop in exports of Portuguese goods in the first half valued at 675 million euros and other markets, especially the Europeans, could not compensate.

Between January and June (the data from this last month were released Tuesday by INE), exports suffered a decline of 1.8% to 24,782 million euros, and imports down 1.4 % to 29,799 million euros. This caused the trade deficit to worsen, albeit lightly, having come to five billion euros.

Trade with other European markets even performed positively, with sales rise at a higher pace of imports, supported by trade with countries such as Spain and France.

However, the slack gains with Europe (of which Portugal is very dependent, despite affixed on diversification in recent years) was not enough to offset the losses in trade with other countries. In the first six months of the year, the value of goods sold to European extra-EU markets fell from EUR 906 million.

Only Angola accounted for 53% of this break (EUR 478 million), weight rises to 74 5% when it also joins China, Brazil and the United States (in this case, the flickers in fuel sales by Galp help explain part of the decline).

the Chinese growth tends to cool, Brazil is undergoing a recession that promises to be long and, in the case of Angola, sales are falling consecutively for 18 months under the crisis caused by low oil prices. Even with the economic recovery, this country will tend to focus increasingly on local production, which will cause some difficulties for exporters, many of which are micro and small companies that have this country as the only export destination.

The negative shock on the trade balance would be even greater if the values ​​of imports of goods from non-EU countries have not come down, hitchhiking factors such as low oil prices. According to the INE, purchases fell 16.3%, equivalent to 632 million euros.

The data now released by Statistics show that in June gave a negative contribution to the first six months of the year . According to this public body that month exports of goods decreased by 2% year on year, with imports of goods down to a lower rate: 0.4%. In the previous month, the trend was reversed, with the value of foreign sales to fall 1.1% and imports go down 3.8%.

Exports of food and drink, says INE, stood out the positive to grow 4.7%, while the purchase of aircraft to Brazil and the United States for the purpose of renewing the TAP fleet, did shoot imports linked to transport items.

By excluding fuels and lubricants, says the INE, it appears that “exports increased 0.5% and imports grew by 3.6%” (against 1.8% and 6.6% in May this year) .