Terms Of Trade Unchanged In September

There was a seasonal deficit on trade in goods and services of £3.5bn in the month of September. The results for Q3 were an £8.4bn deficit compared with £8.6bn in Q2. The deficit in trade in goods alone was £7.2bn. The seasonally adjusted surplus of trade in services was £3.7bn. The volume of exports, excluding oil and erratics, was 0.2% lower, but the volume of imports was 4.1% higher compared with August. Both export and import prices rose by 1.1% in September compared with August.

The total value of exports in September was £19.4bn and increase of £0.7bn and the total value of imports rose by £1.9bn to £26.6bn. In Q3 2009 the trade in goods deficit was £19.8bn, down £0.1bn, total exports rose by £2bn to £56.9bn and total imports by £1.9bn to £76.7bn.

At the commodity level, important factors in September were capital goods and oil exports and imports of cars, aircraft, chemicals and intermediate goods. Quarterly figures show that cars, chemicals and oil were important exports and oil and cars were also important imports.

The EU-wide trade deficit widened to £3.4bn compared with £3bn in August. EU exports rose to £10.9bn (up £0.6bn or 6.2%) and imports to £14.3bn (up £1bn or 7.8%). Again the most significant factors were oil, cars and capital goods. Trade within the G7 export trade during September compared with August fell by £0.2bn with the USA, the largest among the G7 countries. Import trade within the G7 from Germany rose by £0.4bn. Imports from South Africa rose by £0.2bn. Over the quarter within the G7, exports to the US rose by £0.5bn and to germany and France both by £0.4bn. Imports from Germany rose by £0.8bn but imports from the USA fell by £0.5bn.

The volume of exports fell by 0.2% in the month to September but the volume of imports rose by 4.1%. Over the quarter, exports rose by 3.6% and imports by 3.5% compared with Q2. The terms of trade were unchanged in September as both import and export prices rose by 1.1%. There was an increase in the terms of trade between Q2 and Q3 because export prices rose by 0.6% but import prices fell by 0.4%.

The surplus on trade in services narrowed to £3.7bn in September from £3.9bn in August. Total exports fell by £0.1bn to £13.2bn but imports rose £0.1bn to £9.5bn. In Q3 the surplus on trade in services widened to £11.4bn. Total exports rose to £39.7bn (up £0.3bn or 0.9%) and imports rose to £28.3bn (up £0.2bn or 0.8%).