PODGORICA (Montenegro), August 25 (SeeNews) – Montenegro’s foreign trade deficit widened by 12.9% on the year to 1 billion euro ($1.1 billion) in the first seven months of 2016, the statistics office said on Thursday.
The country's exports increased by an annual 4% to 173.2 million euro in the January-July period, while imports jumped 11.5% to 1.2 billion euro, the office said in a statement on its website.
In July alone, the trade gap was 175 million euro, widening by 0.5% on the year and by 3.9% on the month. Exports increased 23.3% on the year but fell 10.2% month-on-month, to 27.4 million euro, while imports rose by 3.1% year-on-year and 1.8% on the month to 202.5 million euro.
Montenegro's key foreign markets in the first seven months of the year were Serbia, which absorbed 40.3 million euro in exports, Hungary (25.7 million euro), and Bosnia (11.5 million euro), while imports into the country came mainly from Serbia, which accounted for 256.1 million euro in imports, Germany (135.7 million euro), and China (112.4 million euro).
In 2015, Montenegro's foreign trade deficit widened by 5% to 1.5 billion euro.
($=0.8856 euro)