The foreign trade balance was in deficit of USD 125.8 million, while it was in surplus of USD 485.9 million in the first quarter of 2019, and decreased by USD 611.7 million from the same period of 2019.

Our two neighbors, China and Russia have the highest shares in total foreign trade turnover. Trade with China reached USD 1.2 billion in the first three months of 2020, which is 56.5% of total trade turnover. Exports to China account for 87.3% of total exports. Bituminous coal and copper concentrates accounted for 26.7% and 38.8% of total exports to China. Gold accounted for 84.0% of goods exported to the United Kingdom, fluorspar -- for 91.6% of total export good to Russian Federation and bituminous coal -- for 51.7% of goods exported to Singapore.

The decrease worth USD 735.9 million in the export was due to the decrease in exports of USD 115.6 million in gold, USD 152.6 million in copper concentrates and USD 391.3 million in coal.

In the first quarter of 2020, 33.5% of the total imports were from Russia, 29.0% was from China, 7.6% was from Japan, 4.6% was from the USA and 4.0% was from the Republic of Korea, which are accounting for 78.7% of the total import.

54.1% of the total imports from Russia were petroleum products, 64.7% of the total imports from Japan were cars, and 9.3% of the total imports from China were electricity, 3.8% were trucks and the remaining percentage was imports of other products from China.

The USD 124.2 million decrease in imports from the same period of the previous year was mainly due to USD 36.3 million decrease in car imports and USD 15.3 million decrease in truck import.

Exports of mineral products, textiles and textile articles, natural or cultured stones, precious metals jewelry made up 95.8 percent of the total export. On the other hand, 69.3 percent of the total imports was mineral products, machinery, equipment, electric appliances, transport vehicle and its spare parts and food products.

Source: National Statistics Office