Trade deficit dropped to 11.19 billion US dollars last year, down by 34 per cent from 17.06 billion USD in 2016, as exports rose significantly to 34.76 billion USD lin 2017, from 30.02 billion USD in 2016, almost entirely due to higher earnings from exports of hydrocarbons.
The Algerian Customs’ National Centre of Data Processing and Statistics (CNIS) reported here Sunday that in addition to higher exports, total imports fell to 45.95 billion USD from 47.09 billion in 2016, a drop of 2.4 per cent.
According to the CNIS, hydrocarbons accounted for 94.54 per cent of total exports in 2017 at 32.86 billion USD, up 16.45 per cent from the 28.22 billion USD recorded in 2016, while non-hydrocarbon exports were still marginal 1.89 billion USD, up by 5.21 per cent compared with 2016.
Non-hydrocarbon exports were mainly semi-processed products, food products, industrial capital goods, raw products and non-food consumer goods.
Among imports, lubricants accounted for nearly 2.0 billion USD in 2017, agricultural capital goods 611 million USD, food products 8.43 billion USD and non-food consumer goods 8.45 billion USD.
However, imports of industrial capital goods fell to 13.96 billion USD last year from 15.41 billion USD in 2016 while imports of semi-processed products fell to 10.98 billion USD from 11.43 billion USD previously and imports of raw products eased to 1.52 billion USD from 1.56 billion USD.
The main destinations for Algerian exports in 2017 were Italy (5.55 billion USD), France (4.5 billion), Spain, the United States and Brazil while the main sources of imports were China (8.31 billion USD), France (4.3 billion), Italy, Germany and Spain.
