Trade balance shows growth in Slovak domestic & foreign demand

Slovakia's trade balance development keeps indicating growth in both domestic and foreign demand, said UniCredit Bank Czech Republic and Slovakia analyst Ľubomír Koršňák on Tuesday while commenting on the March trade balance figures released by the Slovak Statistics Office earlier in the day. "After taking into account the traditional season, exports continued growing in March, while imports went moderately down from February, which might signalise, for example, weaker performance of industry during the Easter April - weaker supplies of material and semi-finished goods," stated Koršňák. The structure of exports will be revealed by the Statistics Office in a month. "However, we assume that their growth was chiefly driven by the engineering industry and automotive plants. Exports kept growing at a relatively dynamic pace at the beginning of the year despite a stronger shortfall of the automotive industry's exports in January," said Koršňák. Exports at the beginning of the year have thus reported the fastest year-on-year growth since the 3Q 2012.