Pretoria - South Africa recorded a trade surplus of R2 billion in July, the South African Revenue Services (SARS) said on Tuesday.
According to SARS, the surplus was due to an increase in exports and imports at 0.8 percent and 8.1 percent respectively.
"The trade surplus for July 2010 is R2.0 billion (surplus of R0.4 billion in July 2009) compared to a surplus of R5.6 billion in June 2010, a month-on-month decline of R3.6 billion," said SARS adding that the cumulative deficit for the year to date is R6.6 billion compared to R18.4 billion in 2009.
Experts had expected the trade balance to show a deficit of R1.4 billion.
"The continued rise in exports is encouraging. The sharp fall in the growth rate comes after two very large increases in the preceding months. These figures have no implications for monetary policy and we still expect the Reserve Bank to reduce interest rates next week," said the Nedbank economic group.
