LatinNews Daily - 05 May 2021

* Brazil’s economy ministry has released the latest balance of trade figures, according to which Brazil saw a US$10.35bn trade surplus in April – a 67.9% increase on the surplus recorded in April 2020, and the largest monthly surplus ever recorded since the start of the current series in 1997. Exports totalled US$26.48bn, a 50.5% year-on-year increase, while imports grew 41.1% to US$16.13bn. In the four months between January and April 2021, Brazil’s balance of trade totalled US$146bn, with a US$18.26bn surplus. Herlon Brandão, undersecretary for intelligence and statistics of foreign trade, says that the strong performance of exports in April is due to an increase in both the volume and the value of trade products. The economy ministry has also changed its methodology: it now excludes merely accounting operations from the trade balance, which notably concerns the import or export of oil rigs and related equipment between subsidiaries of the state-owned oil firm Petrobras, some of which are registered abroad. This methodology change led to the revision of the Q1 trade surplus, from US$1.65bn to US$7.95bn.

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