REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Minister of Finance, Bambang Brojonegoro, said that the trade balance conditions was still in surplus until July 2015 due to global economic slowdown.

“It means that the global economy weakened and the import was affected by the exchange rate,” he said, Tuesday (18/8).

He explained that the national export weakened due to the decrease of demand in export destination countries. However, the import was also decreased due to the US dollar strengthen.

The government has made anticipation to encourage household consumption or investment to support the economic growth rate.

"Now we no longer rely on imports and exports. We expect that the manufacturing sector can increase domestic production," he added.

Earlier, the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) released that the trade balance in July 2015 was still in a surplus of 1.33 billion US dollars which had been the highest surplus in the last 19 months.

"This surplus was the highest since 19 months or the biggest surplus since January 2014," said Deputy Production Statistics BPS Adi Lumaksono.

Trade surplus in July 2015 was occurred because of the realization of the value of exports, which reached 11.41 billion US dollars and  the import value which only reached 10.07 billion US dollars.

The trade balance from January to July 2015 had been a surplus of 5.73 billion US dollars, with cumulative value of exports of 89.76 billion US dollars and cumulative value of imports of 84.03 billion US dollars.

However, the value of exports from January to June 2015 were decreased by 12.81 percent, compared to the same period in 2014 which reached 102.9 billion US dollars. The value of imports were also decreased by 25.18 percent, compared to the same period in 2014, 104 billion US dollars

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