Business News
Indonesia's exports drop as demand, prices fall
Dec 2, 2008, 3:00 GMT
Jakarta - Indonesia's exports declined by more than 11 per cent in October, dragged down by weak demand and falls in prices for the country's products, media reports said Tuesday.
Total export value reached 10.8 billion dollars for the month, a 11.6 per cent decline compared with the previous month's figure of 12.23 billion dollars, the National Statistics Agency said.
Exports for first 10 months of the year stood at 118.4 billion dollars, up by 26.9 per cent over the same period in 2007, the agency said.
'The shrinking export value was caused by the decline on both the volume and the prices of resource-based export commodities,' said agency chief Rusman Heriawan. The country's main commodities are such as coal, palm oil, rubber, copper, copra, tin and cocoa.
Heriawan said exports to China and the United States dropped sharply, while exports to Japan remained stable - but because Japan has declared it is in recession, exports to Tokyo may drop in November or December.
'With the financial crisis in US that was followed by Japan and China, our exports now become more difficult,' Heriawan was quoted as saying by Media Indonesia, an Indonesian daily. 'Almost all commodity prices are declined ranging from 10 to 20 per cent.'
The country's import value in October reached at 10.6 billion dollars, a 5.3 per cent decline from the previous month. Annual imports through October reached 112.1 billion dollars.
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