XN000022-1996-02-12 — Page 11

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The value of imports continued to increase, by 14% over a year earlier to $127.7 billion in December 1995.

Changes in the value of imports from 10 main suppliers are shown in Table 5.

Comparing December 1995 with December 1994, the value of imports from all main suppliers showed increases of various magnitudes: France (+130%), Malaysia (+32%), the United States (+30%), South Korea (+19%), the United Kingdom (+16%), Taiwan (+11%), Singapore (+11%), Germany (+9,0%), Japan (+8.6%) and China (+7.4%).

Comparing the year 1995 with the year 1994, the value of imports from all main suppliers showed increases of various magnitudes: France (+88%), Malaysia (+43%), the United States (+29%), South Korea (+27%), Singapore (+26%), Taiwan (+20%), the United Kingdom (+20%), China (+15%), Japan (+13%) and Germany (+12%).

The value of imports in the year 1995, at $1,491.1 billion, increased by 19% over the same period in 1994.

Table 6 shows changes in the value of imports of ten principal commodity divisions.

Comparing the year 1995 with the year 1994, increases were recorded in the value of imports of most principal commodity divisions.

More notable increases were registered for electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances, and electrical parts thereof (by $47.1 billion or 34%); telecommunications and sound recording and reproducing apparatus and equipment (by $25.4 billion or 21%); office machines and automatic data processing machines (by $20.3 billion or 42%); plastics in primary forms (by $15.6 billion or 55%); miscellaneous manufactured articles consisting mainly of baby carriages, toys, games and sporting goods (by $13.1 billion or 14%); and textiles (by $12.2 billion or 10%).

Over the same period, a decrease in the value of imports was recorded for road vehicles (by $5.3 billion or 10%).

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 December 1995 will be released in early March.