By Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein
According to KOTRA (reported by Yonhap):
North Korea’s trade volume sank 18 percent last year from a year earlier, ending five years of straight growth, due largely to a drop in the prices of its key trading items such as coal and overall shipments, a South Korean trade agency said Wednesday.
The North’s overall trade volume came to US$6.25 billion in 2015, compared with $7.61 billion the previous year, according to the state-run Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA).
The reclusive country’s outbound shipments fell 15 percent on-year to reach $2.7 billion, while imports also dropped 30 percent to $3.55 billion over the cited period, the data compiled by the agency showed.
Consequently, the communist state’s trade deficit reached $850 million last year, narrowing 33 percent from the previous year.
The North’s trade volume has been on a rising path since 2009 reaching an all-time high of $7.61 billion in 2014.
But a drop in prices of key trade items such as coal, coupled with a slowdown in China — its strongest ally — led to a decline in overall trade volume, KOTRA said.
Bilateral trade volume between North Korea and China came to $5.71 billion last year, down 16.8 percent from a year earlier,
The figure accounted for 91.3 percent of the North’s overall trade in 2015, slightly higher than the previous year’s 90.1 percent.
Two things are worth noting: first, it’s about trade volumes in dollar terms, not the amount of goods per se. Second, this would seem to add to what I’ve pointed out earlier on this blog – decreases in trade with China following the sanctions may simply be part of a pattern that began earlier, before the sanctions were put in place. In 2015, trade with China accounted for 90.1 percent of North Korea’s total trade.
Full article by Yonhap here:
N.Korea’s trade volume drops 18 pct in 2015
Yonhap News
2016-06-15
