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Changes in the value of imports from 10 main suppliers are shown in Table 5.
Comparing November 1996 with November 1995, increases were recorded in the value of imports from Germany (+25%), Italy (+21%), Malaysia (+16%), the United Kingdom (+12%), China (+6.6%), Japan (+3.5%), South Korea (+3.4%) and the United States (+1.7%).
However, the value of imports from Singapore and Taiwan decreased by 5.2% and 4.3% respectively.
Comparing the first 11 months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, increases were recorded in the value of imports from Malaysia (+17%), Italy (+16%), the United Kingdom (+8.9%), the United States (+6%), China (+6.0%), Germany (+4.7%) and Singapore (+4%).
However, decreases were recorded in the value of imports from Japan (-6.5%), Taiwan (-4.9%) and South Korea (-0.1%).
Taking all sources together, the value of imports in the first 11 months of 1996, at $1,404.2 billion, increased by 3% over the same period in 1995.
Table 6 shows changes in the value of imports of 10 principal commodity
divisions.
Comparing the first 11 months of 1996 with the same period in 1995, more notable increases in the value of imports were registered for office machines and automatic data processing machines (by $11.8 billion or 19%); electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances, and electrical parts thereof (by $8.9 billion or 5.2%); clothing (by $6.9 billion or 7.7%); footwear (by $3.9 billion or 8.1%); and miscellaneous manufactured articles consisting mainly of baby carriages, toys, games and sporting goods (by $3.4 billion or 3.6%).
Over the same period, decreases in the value of imports were recorded for telecommunications and sound recording and reproducing apparatus and equipment (by $4.4 billion or 3.3%); textiles (by $2.3 billion or 1.9%); and non-metallic mineral manufactures (by $914 million or 2.3%).
All the trade statistics described here are measured at current prices and no account has been taken of changes in prices between the periods of comparison.
A separate analysis of the volume and price movements of external trade for November 1996 will be released in early February 1997.