News Room - Steel Industry

Posted on 05 Jun 2009

Exports down 26.3% year-on-year in April due to recession

Malaysia’s exports fell 26.3% year-on-year in April as the global recession dampened demand for the country’s manufactured goods and liquefied natural gas (LNG) as well as crude and refined petroleum products, the Statistics Department said.

 

Imports dropped 22.4% while trade surplus stood at RM7.36bil.

 

Total trade, at RM74.88bil, was 24.6% lower than a year ago.

 

The data for exports and trade surplus came in worse than the market consensus of 21.3% for exports and RM12.1bil for trade surplus while the decline in imports (of 22.4%) was above market expectations of a 26.9% drop.

 

The figures were compounded by the price of oil. In April last year, a barrel of crude oil was trading at between US$101 and US$119 on the Nymex but it was trading at between US$45 and US$51 in the month under review.

 

In March, exports saw a decline of 15.6%, imports fell 28.7% and the trade surplus was RM12.5bil.

 

Month-on-month, exports for April declined by 5.6% while imports increased by 8.8% due to higher imports of intermediate and capital goods, which contributed to an increase of 0.4% in total trade.

 

For April, electrical and electronic products made up 41.4% or RM17.01bil of total exports while palm oil contributed 7.3% or RM2.99bil.

 

Crude petroleum was 3.5% or RM1.45bil of exports while LNG made up 4.7% or RM1.94bil and chemicals and chemical products contributed 6.5% or RM2.67bil.

 

For imports, intermediate goods made up 67.9% or RM22.93bil, capital goods comprised 16.4% or RM5.55bil and consumption goods contributed 7.7% or RM2.59bil.

 

Reuters quoted CIMB Investment Bank chief economist Lee Heng Guie as saying: “The export numbers have continued to contract quite sharply. It’s partly due to the base effect.

 

“It also reflects continued contraction in external demand especially in the United States where they are still building precautionary savings, resulting in reduced spending.

 

“Although we have seen some signs of stabilisation in the global economy and firm commodity prices, we will still not be able to escape double digit declines in exports, going into the third quarter. We may see single digit declines in exports in the fourth quarter.”

 

Lee expected exports to contract 20%-25% for the full year.

 

“It was definitely a weak start to the second half,” he said.