Annual merchandise trade surplus revised up to $271m

11.20am

New Zealand's merchandise trade surplus has been revised to $479 million for the year ended February, Statistics New Zealand said today.

The February month trade surplus was revised up to $271 million, from the provisional $269 million and a turnaround from January's deficit of $246 million.

Merchandise trade exports totalled $2.62 billion for the month of February, $2 million higher than Statistics NZ's estimations last month, and $32.623 billion for the year ended February.

The annual imports figure was an 8.3 per cent increase on the year ended February 2001.

The annual surplus was revised down by $33 million from the estimated $512 million.

In figures released last month, some $2.351 billion worth of imports came into the country in February, an increase of 7.1 per cent on the previous year.

The commodities with the largest monthly increases were meat (10.7 per cent), fish (10.5 per cent) and fruit and nuts (23 per cent), while casein dropped by 43.3 per cent.

Removing seasonal and irregular variations, the monthly trend in the trade balance has been declining since last August.

The last large imported item valued at more than $100 million, such as large aircraft and ships, was in November 2000.

Statistics NZ also said today it had revised export data between August 1997 and October 2001, by between -0.4 per cent and +0.2 per cent, because of better information and a downward revision in butter export values.

- NZPA