Japan sees trade deficit for 3rd straight month in October

By Aysu Bicer

ANKARA (AA) - Japan surprisingly posted a trade deficit of 67.37 billion yen ($586 million) in October, below expectations, the Finance Ministry said on Wednesday.

In the same month a year earlier, the figure was a surplus of 840.80 billion yen.

This was the third straight month of a trade deficit, with exports rising 9.4% year-on-year to 7.1 billion yen while imports jumped 26.7% to 7.2 billion yen.

Japan’s exports slowed down in the eight months up to October, as car shipments kept slumping.

For the first 10 months of the year, the trade gap was 219.98 billion yen, compared to a surplus of 235.13 yen billion in the same period of 2020.

Global supply constraints are still having a negative impact on the economy as car shipments continued to shrink.

While exports of steel and semiconductor manufacturing equipment continued to post gains, exports of cars slumped by more than a third as major automakers cut production due to parts shortages.