Eurozone international trade surplus reaches €13.6bn

The 18-member eurozone trade surplus rose to 13.6 billion euros (about 18.8 billion U.S. dollars) surplus in February, compared with 9.8 billion-euro surplus in the same period last year, European Union (EU)'s statistics office said Tuesday. The February data also widened from a revised 0.8 billion euros surplus in January, according to the Eurostat. According the data released, eurozone's seasonally adjusted exports rose by 1.2 percent and imports by 0.6 percent compared with January. As for 28-mumber EU, the first estimate of trade balance was a surplus of 4.4 billion euros in February, compared with 13.3 billion euros deficit in January and 1.2 billion euros surplus in the same month of last year. EU's seasonally adjusted exports rose by 0.9 percent while imports fell by 0.5 percent compared with January. EU's imports from most of its major partners fell in January 2014 compared with January 2013. For exports, the largest increases were registered with China and Japan, and the most notable falls for exports to Brazil and Russia. (1 euro = 1.38 U.S. dollars)