Friday, November 8, 2013

September 2013 External Trade

The momentum established from August has so far been kept up, which I hadn’t expected. There’s usually a lull after major holidays, so count this one as another pleasant surprise (log annual and monthly changes; seasonally adjusted):

01_exim

Beating out August’s sharply higher numbers was never on the cards, so a pullback in growth was more or less what I thought might happen. But 4.7% in log terms was more than I hoped for.

Breaking it down:

02_ee

Electrical and electronics shipments continued to grow, while there was a slight fall back in other exports, largely due to weaker refined petroleum products and metal manufactures. Crude oil jumped by nearly RM1 billion though.

Imports stayed – in my eyes anyway – more or less flat (RM millions):

03_imp

October’s usually the boom month, where shipments go up to cater for the year end holidays in advanced economies, so if we’re seeing a true recovery in global trade, I’d expect to see even better growth for October.

Technical Notes:

September 2013 External Trade report from MATRADE

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