RI's Trade Deficit With Argentina Drops 320 Million Dollars Due To Massive Wheat Imports

Illustrative imports of gandum. (Pexels / Tomasz Filipek)

JAKARTA – Indonesia recorded a trade balance deficit of US$320.2 million with Argentina in April 2022.

Head of BPS Margo Yuwono said the book was due to the higher import value of US$349.2 billion compared to exports which amounted to US$29.1 billion.

"The deficit with Argentina is bigger than the deficit with other countries," he said while speaking to reporters online on Tuesday, May 17.

According to Margo, the high difference in the trade balance was caused by soaring imports of HS 10 commodities, namely in the form of cereals (wheat, seed flour, etc.) and HS 23, namely dregs and leftovers from the food industry.

Margo did not deny that the current conditions were the result of the war situation in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine.

As is known, Ukraine is the main country for importing Indonesian wheat. Likewise with Russia, which supports Indonesia's wheat needs a lot.

“From the data we have, there is indeed a shift in Indonesian wheat imports from Ukraine. So this can also be concluded because so far we have imported from Ukraine and they are experiencing turmoil, so we divert some of our imports (wheat) from Argentina," he explained.

A similar situation also occurred in trade with Australia, which experienced a deficit of 283.6 million dollars due to the high demand for imports of wheat and others.

"The second largest deficit occurred with Australia from mineral fuels or HS 27 and cereals or HS 10," he said.

In general, Margo said that in April 2022 there was a trade balance surplus of 7.56 billion US dollars or the largest in history after the previous record was in October 2021 with 5.74 billion US dollars.