Favourable Trends in BH Foreign Trade

The Central Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CBBH) today released new data on trends in foreign trade in BH, which show that since mid 2002 exports are rising considerably and imports are growing more slowly. If these trends continue, the outlook for BH's balance of trade is much brighter than in past years.

Explaining these new data, which are available on the CBBH website (www.cbbh.ba), the CBBH Governor Peter Nicholl wants to stress that a new internationally recognized method (X-12) has been adopted for better removing regular seasonal influences from the monthly statistics on exports and imports. Second, the long term trends in exports and imports have been calculated using the same method. These trends are shown in the attached charts, which will be provided each month on the Bank's website. This information on trends is important because it makes the longer term general direction of exports and imports more clearly evident and helps in better understanding the BH balance of payments.

Since mid 2002 exports have been growing at a much faster rate than imports, which have been rather flat over the same period. This is good news for BH, including the outlook for jobs and for the balance of payments.

Governor Nicholl said that it is very important that governments continue to create a better economic and business environment to further encourage exports which, though growing faster, are still at a much lower level than imports.

The CBBH also this week has commenced publishing monthly commodity details for exports and imports, which will facilitate better the analysis of reasons for movements in the aggregate statistics. Also, CBBH is developing a new series at BH level on the partner countries with whom BH trades. This new data will be released within a couple of months.