The High Commission for Planning (HCP) notes, in its situation of Q4-2021 and outlook for Q1-2022, a relative resilience of national foreign trade against the backdrop of rising world prices.
“At the national level, exports of goods in value would have increased by 24%, benefiting from a positive price effect on exports and the relatively favorable orientation of external demand,” said the same source. They would have been driven by the improvement in external sales of phosphates and derivatives, in a context of rising prices on the world market, by the increase in exports of clothing and hosiery goods, of those of industrial products. electrical and electronic products, agricultural and agro-food products and, to a lesser extent, the automobile sector in its construction segment, specifies the HCP. Aeronautics exports, for their part, have shown some signs of recovery in connection with the gradual restart of the aeronautics sector at the global and European level, after the sharp decline in 2020.
At the same time, imports would have increased by 26% in the fourth quarter of 2021, suffering from the increase in import prices, in particular those of raw materials, combined with a corrective effect after the decline recorded in 2020. The energy bill would have been impacted by the increase in imports of diesel and fuels and other hydrocarbons. Excluding energy, the increase in imports would have been fueled much more by that of semi-finished products, raw products and, to a lesser extent, by that of industrial capital goods and consumer goods, in particular passenger cars, vehicles. drugs and other pharmaceuticals.
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