Due to fuels and agriculture, the country’s exports contract

According to the National Administrative Department of Statistics (Dane)Colombian exports had a drop of 10% in March, with total sales of US$4,462 million, compared to US$4,957 million in the same month of 2022.

(See: March exports decreased due to drop in fuel sales).

The statistical office stated that the trend was mainly driven by the 16.3% drop in external sales of the group of fuels and extractive industry products, which in the third month of year invoiced for a total of US$2,258 million.

“In March 2023, 14.6 million barrels of crude oil were exported, which represented a 15.7% drop compared to March 2022,” said Dane.

Similarly, other sectors that fell were agriculture, food and beverages. For March, this item suffered a collapse of 10.2%, mainly explained by the decrease in coffee exports, which had a drop of 30.1%, fact that contributed negatively with 11 percentage points (pp) to the variation.

(See: The unexpected boom in Russian oil exports despite sanctions).

It should be noted that according to the National Federation of Coffee Growers (FNC) for March the international trade of the grain went from more than 1.1 million bags of 60 kilos to 906,000 bags.

This agricultural item presented a total sales of US$985.8 million, compared to US$1,097 million in the same month of 2022.

For its part, the manufacturing category also recorded a 1.2% drop, with sales for US$913.1 million. This behavior was mainly explained by the drop in external sales of chemical products (-14.7%), which contributed a negative 6.1 pp.

However, the positive impulses occurred in “other sectors”, which had a rise of 29.1% in March, mainly explained by the increase in sales of non-monetary gold, which contributed 29 percentage points to the variation of the group and were for a total of US$305.2 million.

According to Javier Diaz, president of the National Association of Foreign Trade (Analdex), with the March results the downward trend since December of last year in the value of Colombian exports continues.

“This responds to what is happening with international demand, inflation, high interest rates have discouraged consumption, so demand has fallen and that is why we are selling less. The prices of a large part of agricultural products have been declining. As long as inflation does not drop internationally and even in Colombia, this trend will continue.Diaz said.

(See: Non-oil foreign investment does not translate into more exports).

Now, looking at the quarterly data, the Dane record shows that in this period of time there was also a drop in international trade.

According to the data, from January to March, Colombia had total sales of US$12,361 million, presenting a decrease of 4.7% compared to to the same period of time in 2022 where US$12,967 million were sold.

However, unlike the monthly record, in the quarterly case the drop was due to the 13.5% decrease in the agricultural, beverage and food sector, which billed a total of US$2,573 million.

This behavior was explained by the drop in sales of unroasted coffee, decaffeinated or not, which contributed -10.9 percentage points to the variation of the group.

Next, there is the drop in the heading of fuels and products of the extractive industries that were of US$6,614.1 million and decreased 3.6% compared to the same period of 2022.

The same case happened with manufacturing whose sales were for US$2,373 million, generating a 3.6% drop in the quarterly result.

This behavior was also explained by the low external sales of chemical products, which was -12.9%.

(See: Agriculture and food took the pace of exports in 2023).

However, equal to the results of March, the category of “other sectors” also showed a rebound in the quarterly record.

According to Dane’s evaluation, this group increased its exports by 19.3% with a total of US$800.4 million, compared to the US$671.1 invoiced in the same period last year.

“The behavior was explained by the increase in sales of non-monetary gold that contributed 18.7 percentage points to the variation of the groupthe Dane explained.

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