Japan’s exports for July grew by 37 percent from a year earlier, a fifth straight month of year-on-year expansion.
The Finance Ministry said on Wednesday that exports during the period were worth about 67 billion dollars.
A jump in year-on-year growth partly reflects the fact that exports a year earlier were battered by the coronavirus pandemic. But last month’s figure also topped pre-pandemic exports for July 2019 by 10.7 percent and marked the second-highest for July since comparable statistics became available in 1979.
The growth was led by robust car exports to the United States, and iron and steel products used as building materials to South Korea.
Last month’s imports soared 28.5 percent year-on-year to about 63 billion dollars in value, marking a sixth month in a row of growth.
Crude oil prices more than doubled from the previous year, leading import growth by value. Imports of medicine, including coronavirus vaccines, also grew by nearly 40 percent from the same period last year.
The goods trade surplus stood at about 4 billion dollars, ensuring black ink for the second straight month.
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