Lebanon’s trade deficit dropped by 22.29% year-on-year (y-o-y) by April 2015 to record $4.64B due to a 20.22% decrease in overall imports outpacing the 8.71% decline in total exports. This was mainly due to the prominent trend of the depreciating Euro and falling international oil prices, over the same period.
Total imports, in the first four months of the year, tallied $5.61B compared to $7.04B during the same period last year.
In more details, the three major product categories that were imported to Lebanon by April were mineral products (16.62% share of total imports), “machinery and electrical instruments” (11.90% share of total imports) and “products of the chemical or allied industries” (11.71% share of total imports). The yearly change in imported mineral products, displayed a substantial drop of 47.13% from April 2014. With demand for that commodity being inelastic, the nose dive in mineral imports goes hand in hand with the average 44.20% decrease in the price of international oil since April of last year. In addition, “machinery and electrical instruments” went down by 16.63% y-o-y by April, despite the increase in tonnage imported from 78 tons by April 2014 to 334 tons this year. So this downturn might be attributed to the drop in overall Chinese prices and the depreciating Euro since China and Europe sells about 40% of electrical appliances to Lebanon. “Products of the chemical or allied industries” also downturned by an annual 4.25% as the demand for the related product declined, illustrated by the yearly decrease in tonnage from 185 to 173 by April 2015. Notably, the three major countries that Lebanon imported goods from were China, Germany and France with corresponding weights of 11.86%, 6.44% and 6.25%.
Similarly, total exports fell yearly by 8.71% to $978.58M by April 2014 in parallel with the 2.41% decrease in volume of overall exports to 568 tons.
Specifically, exported “prepared foodstuffs, beverages, and tobacco” (16.55% share of total exports) experienced a yearly detraction of 4.75% by April due to the 6.31% fall in exported volume to 104 units. Furthermore, exported “pearls, precious stones, and metals”, constituting 15.72% of total exports, went down by 23.56% y-o-y partially due to the average 4.51% y-o-y fall of international price of gold to 1,192.46 $/ounce. Furthermore, “Machinery and electrical instruments” (14.02% share of total exports) underwent an annual 5.46% shrinkage in the value of exports due to the rise in prices as the volume slumped by 17.39% to 19 tons. In terms of the major destinations of the Lebanese exports, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Iraq grasped respective weights of 13.25%, 10.58% and 8.28%.
On a monthly basis, total exports dropped by 3.37% from last month to $234.75M. In parallel, overall imports dropped by a monthly 4.30% to $1.44B. In turn, the trade deficit narrowed from $1.26B to $1.21B in April.