XN000022-1997-04-14 — Page 13

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Over the same period, an increase in the value of domestic exports was recorded for professional, scientific and controlling instruments and apparatus (by $247 million or 57%).

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

Comparing February 1997 with February 1996, the value of imports from most main suppliers showed increases of various magnitudes : France (+103%), the United Kingdom (+25%), Malaysia (+22%), the United States (+17%), Germany (+13%), South Korea (+8.9%), Japan (+8.8%), Taiwan (+8.1%) and Singapore (+0.7%).

However, the value of imports from China decreased by 4.9%.

Comparing the first two months of 1997 with the same period in 1996, increases were recorded in the value of imports from France (+49%), the United Kingdom (+20%), Malaysia (+10%), Germany (+9.4%), the United States (+9.3%), Japan (+1.9%), South Korea (+1.7%) and China (+1.6%).

However, the value of imports from Taiwan and Singapore decreased by 4.7% and 0.6% respectively.

Taking all destinations together, the value of imports in the first two months of 1997, at $234.0 billion, decreased by 3.4% over the same period in 1996.

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

divisions.

Comparing the first two months of 1997 with the same period in 1996, more notable increases in the value of imports were registered for office machines and automatic data processing machines (by $3.0 billion or 27%); electrical machinery, apparatus and appliances, and electrical parts thereof (by $1.0 billion or 3.5%); clothing (by $881 million or 5.6%); miscellaneous manufactured articles consisting mainly of baby carriages, toys, games and sporting goods (by $505 million or 3.5%); and footwear (by $466 million or 5.0%).

Over the same period, a more notable decrease in the value of imports was recorded for general industrial machinery and equipment, and machine parts (by $458 million or 6.5%).

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.