Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Morocco's trade deficit expands

I had just completed posting about the gloomy state of the orange industry a few minutes ago, when the latest trade figures for Morocco landed on my desktop.

Morocco's external trade deficit rose 15.4 percent in the first two months compared with the same period of last year, according to the Office of Changes.

It posted the imports at the value of 27,338 billion dirhams (3,038 billion U.S. dollars), up 10,8 percent from last year's 24,685 billion dirhams (2,743 billion dollars).

Total exports for January and February hit 15,247 billion dirhams (1,694 billion dollars), representing a rise of 7.3 percent from 14,204 billion dirhams (1,578 billion dollars) for the two months in 2005.

A major booster of imports was crude oil, hitting 2,905 billion dirhams (323 billion dollars), up from 2,221 billion dirhams (247 billion dollars) registered for the first two months of last year.

On the good news side, the most important exports included olive oil, which totaled 325.9 million dirhams (36.2 million dollars) against 81.9 million dirhams (9.1 million dollars) reported for the same months of 2005.

Tags:

No comments: