RI's trade balance returns to surplus

JAKARTA. The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) says that the country’s trade balance returned to surplus in October 2014 after suffering deficits in the previous few months.

BPS data showed the trade balance enjoyed a US$23.3 million dollar surplus in October this year after suffering a deficit of $270.3 million in the previous month, the largest deficit that Indonesia recorded in the past five months of 2014.

BPS head Suryamin said that Indonesia’s exports reached $15.35 billion while its imports stood at $15.33 billion in October.

Based on the volume, he also said that the trade balance recorded a surplus of 30.7 million tons of commodities since the volume of exports reached 43.84 million tons while imports stood at 13.18 million tons.

“In October, we also saw that the figure of non-oil and gas sector trade surplus was bigger than [size of] the oil and gas sector trade deficit,” he said.

He said that the non-oil and gas sector recorded a $1.13 billion surplus while the oil and gas sector suffered a $1.11 billion deficit. (nfo)