Strengthening Forint, expanding food export

According to a preliminary estimate by KSH, our foreign trade surplus was EUR 374 million (HUF 103 billion) in February, up EUR 78 million (HUF 14 billion) from February 2009. In January 2010, the volume of foreign trade improved further, by 17 percent in export and by 8.5 percent in import in comparison with last year’s base value. In the first month of the year, our foreign trade surplus was EUR 290 million (HUF 76 billion), growing by EUR 490 million (HUF 124 billion) from the negative balance of EUR 200 million (HUF 48 billion) in January 2009.

In January 2010, the volume of export to and import from the European Union surpassed the January 2009 level by 13 and 8.8 percent, respectively; in our trading with the EU we achieved a HUF 41 billion bigger surplus. The volume of export to non-EU countries grew by almost 40 percent, largely due to doubling our export to Asia, while import surpassed last year’s base level by 7.6 percent.