CANBERRA: Today’s trade data for June showed that the balance on goods and services was a deficit of $2.933 billion. That was up 10% on the prior month the ABS said but still slightly better than the market median forecast of a $3.0 billion.
While the data was fairly boring at a top line level one thing that did stand out was the recovery of the value of the subset of exports known as “Metal ores and minerals” – think mainly iron ore – which rose roughly 7.3% to $6.35 billion dollars in June.
So far the recovery from the April low of $5.53 billion has been tentative and Junes $6.35 billion is still a long way from the peak of $8.759 billion in February 2014. But income from ores and minerals is getting closer to the 5 year average of $6.9 billion.
