Madrid, June 15 (EFE).- The trade deficit has been reduced by 50% in the first four months of the year, reaching 10,954 million euros, after Spanish merchandise exports have increased by 9.2%, to 132,026 million euros, a new maximum.
The Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism has published this Thursday the trade balance until April, which shows an increase in imports to 142,980 million euros, 0.2% more than in the same period of 2022 and the highest figure registered for this period.
Thus, the coverage rate -the part of exports that can be covered with imports- stood at 92.3%, that is, 7.6 percentage points more than that registered in the period January-April 2022.
In the first four months of the year, the energy deficit reached 11,640.3 million euros and fell by almost 27% compared to the same period in 2022, while the non-energy balance showed a surplus of 686.5 million euros ( compared to the deficit of 5,655.6 million from January to April 2022).
The Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Héctor Gómez, has valued in a press release that exports “resist and allow the deficit to be reduced by half” and he wanted to highlight “the good performance of relevant sectors” such as capital goods, automobile and food.
Precisely, the sectors that contributed the most to the increase in exports were capital goods, the automotive sector, food, beverages and tobacco, and chemical products.
Most of the exports (63.8% of the total) went to countries of the European Union, a destination that registered an increase of 10.3%.
Exports to Oceania (33.9%), Latin America (25%), North America (9.6%) and Asia -excluding the Middle East- (1.6%) also increased.