In the first quarter of 2024 (Q1’24), all commodity terms of trade (ToT) fell by 0.12 percentage points, while imports grew by 0.51 percentage points.
This was disclosed by the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday in its All Commodity Price Indices and ToT report for Q1’24.
The bureau defined ToT as the ratio between a country’s export and its import prices.
It was underlined that a rise in the terms of trade between two periods (or when TOT is larger than 100 percent) indicates that the value of exports is increasing relative to the value of imports, allowing the country to purchase more imports for the same value of exports.
According to THE NBS report, all-group export and import indices increased by 0.39 per cent.
NBS stated “The All-Commodity ToT for January, February, and March 2024 stood at 101.89 per cent, 101.77 per cent, and 101.75 per cent respectively.
“The All-Commodity Group ToT decreased by 0.16 per cent points in February and marginally increased by 0.03 per cent points in March resulting in a decrease of 0.12 per cent points between January and March 2024.
“The All-Region Export Index increased by 0.39 per cent between January and March 2024. “This was due to an increase in changes in export prices to all the regions; Asia (+0.68), America (+0.55), Europe (+0.54), Africa (+0.22), and Oceania (+0.2).”
“Similarly, between January and February 2024, export prices increased by (+0.18) per cent point, this was also attributed to changes in the export price to most regions.
“All Region Import Price Index increased by 0.51 per cent point between January and March 2024, this was due to rising import prices from Asia (+0.66), America (+0.52), Europe (+0.49), Oceania (0.25), and Africa (+0.22) of goods imported from the region,” NBS added.
