Australia's first quarter trade surplus to be boosted by soaring export prices
The Dollar Business Bureau The International Trade Price Index released by Australian Bureau of Statistics for the month of March shows that while import prices remained stable, export prices soared to astonishing highs. Cumulatively, import prices increased by merely 1.2% from the first quarter of the previous year whereas export prices rose by 29.1% over the same period. As against the October-December quarter (2016), import prices experienced a fall of 0.6% while export prices grew by 9.4%. The reason cited for volatile export price movement is a turn in commodities cycle, propelled by commodity prices like those of iron ore reaching $94 per tonne towards the end of February 2017. Australia's metal exports in alumina, iron ore and copper showed a price increase of 18.8% during the January-March 2017 period. This was ...
