Brazil has a trade deficit of US$ 176 million in January

Brazil registered a trade deficit of US$ 176 million (R$ 929 million) in January, the Ministry of Economy reported on Tuesday (1st).

The data was in line with market expectations, which pointed to a negative balance of US$ 167 million (R$ 881.8 million) in the trade balance in the first month of the year, according to a Reuters survey.

In January 2021, the country had a trade deficit of US$ 220 million (R$ 1.16 billion).

Last month, exports stood at US$ 19.673 billion (R$ 103.881 billion), a record value for the month and an increase of 25.3% over January 2021 compared to the daily average.

The main highlight was the significant increase in soybean shipments (+5,007.4%), whose harvest was harvested later last year. As a result, total agricultural exports increased 97.5% in the month.

Exports from the extractive industry fell by 18.6%, shaken by a reduction in iron ore sales, which suffered the impact of floods in the state of Minas Gerais. This drop was the main factor behind the 3.8% decline in the country’s sales to China in the month.

Brazilian imports totaled US$ 19.849 billion (R$ 104.81 billion) in January, an increase of 24.6% in the annual comparison by the daily average and the second best result in history for the month after 2014, when US$ 20 .2 billion (R$ 107 billion).

In this case, the main highlight was the 326% jump in imports from the extractive industry, leveraged by the country’s greater demand for energy commodities, such as crude oil (up 420% in imports), natural gas (+501%) and coal ( +335%).

Last year, Brazil registered a trade surplus of US$ 61.223 billion (R$ 323.281 billion), the highest value in the historical series, and, for 2022, the government estimates a new record of US$ 79.4 billion (R$ 419, 3 billion).

RUSSIA

The Undersecretary for Intelligence and Foreign Trade Statistics, Herlon Brandão, said that the expectation is that any political turmoil in Russia, which faces tensions with major Western powers over Ukraine, would have little impact on Brazilian exports to the region, heavily concentrated in food.

“It is a good that has little elasticity, it responds little to falls in income, for example. So an eventual political disturbance that could lead to some economic problem that affects the income of consumers, this could lead to less consumption, but the characteristic of the tariff ends up being less affected by this type of reduction”, he said. “This ends up favoring us in relation to other countries.”