BRATISLAVA, May 9, (WEBNOVINY) — Slovakia’s foreign trade continued to generate a surplus in March. According to preliminary data of the Statistics Office, exports exceeded imports by EUR 135.5 million in the third month. Following an update of the surplus for February by nearly EUR 90 million to EUR 96.1 million, the cumulative trade surplus for three months of 2011 represented EUR 354.6 million. In a yearly comparison, this is by over EUR 60 million than a year ago.
The year-on-year growth rates of both exports and imports moderately decreased but remained two-digit figures. Imports in March reached EUR 4.712 billion with year-on-year growth of 19.5 percent. Overall exports grew 17.6 percent to EUR 4.847 billion. Compared with the first three months of 2010, exports this year grew by 24 percent to EUR 13.209 billion and imports by 24 percent, too, to EUR 12.854 billion.
For the whole of last year the trade surplus of the Slovak Republic was EUR 137.5 million. After years of trade deficits, Slovakia reported an even higher trade surplus of EUR 946.1 million in the crisis year of 2009. The reason was weakening of economic activity and ensuing decline of the need to import components for Slovak manufacturing companies.
SITA
