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Comparing the first seven months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, decreases in the value of domestic exports were recorded for office machines and automatic data processing machines (by $3.1 billion or 28%); clothing (by $2.8 billion or 7%); telecommunications and sound recording and reproducing apparatus and equipment (by $1.2 billion or 20%); miscellaneous manufactured articles consisting mainly of jewellery, goldsmiths' and silversmiths' wares (by $1.1 billion or 9.7%); and photographic apparatus, equipment and supplies, optical goods, watches and clocks (by $775 million or 8,1%).
Over the same period, increases in the value of domestic exports were registered for electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances, and electrical parts thereof (by $790 million or 4.6%); and professional, scientific and controlling instruments and apparatus (by $176 million or 11%).
Changes in the value of imports from 10 main suppliers are shown in Table 5.
Comparing July 1996 with July 1995, increases were recorded in the value of imports from Italy (+25%), Singapore (+21%), the United Kingdom (+12%), China (+9.4%), Malaysia (+5.3%), South Korea (+4.7%) and Germany (+4.6%).
However, the value of imports from the United States, Japan and Taiwan decreased by 11%, 3.5% and 1.8% respectively.
Comparing the first seven months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, increases were recorded in the value of imports from Italy (+19%), Malaysia (+18%), the United Kingdom (+12%), Singapore (+11%), the United States (+6.5%), China (+5.5%), Germany (+2.3%) and South Korea (+0.8%).
However, the value of imports from Japan and Taiwan decreased by 7.3% and 3.3% respectively.
Taking all sources together, the value of imports in the first seven months of 1996, at $872.4 billion, increased by 3.2% over the same period in 1995.
Table 6 shows changes in the value of imports of 10 principal commodity divisions.
Comparing the first seven months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, increases in the value of imports were registered for electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances, and electrical parts thereof (by $8.9 billion or 8.7%); office machines and automatic data processing machines (by $7.5 billion or 20%); clothing (by $3.2 billion or 6.1%); miscellaneous manufactured articles consisting mainly of baby carriages, toys, games and sporting goods (by $2.5 billion or 4.4%); and general industrial machinery and equipment, and machine parts (by $2.3 billion or 8.8%).