ALGIERS: Algeria has failed to achieve or exceed its previous year trade mark of $59.07 billion and showed a decline in the exports of 0.68% in the late November of 2014.
Algeria’s exports hit $58.67 billion from January to late November 2014, against $59.07 billion in the same period of 2013, slightly down 0.68%, said the National Centre for Data Processing and Statistics of the Algerian Customs (CNIS).
Concerning imports, they rose to $53.29 billion against 50.19 billion dollars, up 6.19%, the source said.
These results showed a rate of coverage of imports by exports of 110% against 118% in the same period of comparison, down 8 points.
With this rate of evolution, the Customs expect to close 2014 with trade surplus of about five billion dollars.
According to forecasts of the CNIS, the exports are expected to reach throughout the year nearly $64 billion while imports are expected to hit $59 billion.
The hydrocarbons continued to represent the bulk of the Algerian exports with a share of 95.75% of the overall volume of exports, i.e. $56.2 billion during the first 11 months of 2014, against $57.23 billion in the same period of past year.
The revenues from oil exports have indeed decreased slightly 1.84%, which is explained in particular by the falling in world oil prices.
The non-oil exports, which accounted for 4.25% of the total amount of Algerian exports, reached nearly 2.5 billion dollars during the first eleven months of 2014.
The non-oil exports are composed of semi-products ($2.08 billion), food goods ($284 million), raw products ($99 million), the industrial capital goods ($15 million) and non-food consumer goods ($ 9 million).
Concerning the imports, two groups of products decreased: that of energy and lubricants (-38.84%) which bill totaled $2.46 billion, and the non-food consumer goods (-7.31%) which totaled $9.47 billion.
However, the goods which increased in imports are the food with $10.27 billion (+17%), the industrial capital goods with $17.14 billion (+16.7%) and the agricultural capital goods with $591 million (+30.46%).
Algeria’s first 5 clients are Spain ($8.38 billion), Italy ($7.59bn), France ($5.89bn), Great Britain ($5.11bn) and the Netherlands ($4.45 bn).
As for the main suppliers of Algeria, China tops with $7.44bn), followed by France ($5.89 bn), Spain ($4.60bn), Italy ($4.54bn), Germany ($3.44bn) and the United States ($2.62bn).