Euro zone Dec trade surplus rises as imports sink

The European Union's statistics office Eurostat said the unadjusted trade surplus of the 17 countries sharing the euro was 11.7 billion euros ($15.6 billion) in December.

This was higher than 8.0 billion euros a year earlier, but was below the 13.1 billion euros economists polled by Reuters Forecast.

The statistics office also revised down November 2012's figure from 13.7 billion euros to 13.0 billion.
For the whole of 2012, the single currency bloc recorded an overall 81.8 billion euro ( US $ 108 Billion) surplus, with exports up 7 percent and imports rising 2 percent from 2011.

Note EU-Digest: In comparison the US had a trade deficit of $38.5b and Japan $ 2.8 billion, while China, a country notorious for data collection difficulties has not released all figures yet, but they are expected to show a growth of about 25%.


Read more: Euro zone Dec trade surplus rises as imports sink | Reuters