Data released by the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) on Friday showed the economy posted a US$900.2 million trade surplus in June, significantly higher than the $375.6 million recorded the previous month, thanks to balanced growth between imports and exports.

However, the same data revealed that June saw a 4.42 percent drop in exports year-on-year (yoy) to $12.92 billion from $13.51 billion recorded in the same month last year.

In total, the country saw a 34.97 percent yoy drop for exports in the January-June period after shipping $69.5 billion worth of goods and services so far this year.

BPS head Suryamin emphasized that despite the cumulative drop, demand for oil and gas had been slowly increasing, as conveyed by the volume of oil and gas exported, which reached 22.3 million tons in the first half of the year from 21.9 million tons recorded in the same period last year.

“Global oil prices are slowly increasing and it is affecting our exports, which can also be seen in the volume,” he told reporters at a press conference on Friday.

The mining sector also saw a 23.7 percent yoy drop in exports to $7.88 billion in the January to June period.

Similarly, exports of agricultural goods dropped 18.1 percent, while exports of manufactured goods dropped 4.73 percent. However, the percentage of manufactured goods made up exports increased to 77.29 percent from 71.91 percent.

Furthermore, total imports from January to June dropped 7.41 percent yoy to $12.02 billion. Imports of capital goods dropped 15.31 percent and that of raw and auxiliary goods 12.23 percent.

However, consumer goods rose 13.57 percent compared to last year.

In total, the country saw a $3.59 billion trade surplus from January to June, down by 19.77 percent.

Meanwhile, Trade Minister Thomas Lembong predicted international trade would experience a decrease throughout the rest of the year.

“However, our targeted contraction is not as big as last year’s, in which exports and imports decreased by 14 to 17 percent. We hope [this year’s] trade contraction will remain in the single digits, below 10 percent,” he said, while acknowledging that the global condition was still extremely difficult.

Center of Reforms in Economics (CORE) Indonesia research director Mohammad Faisal noted that the continuous decrease in surplus yoy indicated that the global economic slowdown due to low demand in commodities still negatively affected the country’s exports.

“Our manufactured goods should be able to make up for the drop in commodity exports. However, this has not happened,” Faisal said.

The economist explained that the government should move to focus on the manufacturing industry, as the country could no longer rely on commodity exports since prices remained volatile and hard to control.

Fellow economist, Enny Sri Hartati from the Institute of Economics and Finance (Indef), also

reiterated similar comments, adding that the government must evaluate the possibility of increasing penetration in several countries’ markets.

“It is difficult to try to tinker with oil and gas exports as they rely on global prices. However, we can evaluate non-oil and gas goods to see what can be further developed,” she said.

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