MARCH KEY FIGURES

		January 2009	February 2009	March 2009	Feb 09 to Mar 09
		$m	$m	$m	% change
BALANCE ON GOODS AND SERVICES
	Trend estimates	1 739	1 915	2 108	10
	Seasonally adjusted	765	1 752	2 498	43
CREDITS (Exports of goods & services)
	Trend estimates	24 931	24 519	24 139	-2
	Seasonally adjusted	23 682	24 631	24 647	-
DEBITS (Imports of goods & services)
	Trend estimates	23 192	22 604	22 031	-3
	Seasonally adjusted	22 918	22 879	22 149	-3
- nil or rounded to zero (including null cells)

Balance on Goods and Services

MARCH KEY POINTS


BALANCE ON GOODS AND SERVICES

• The trend estimate of the balance on goods and services was a surplus of $2,108m in March 2009, an increase of $193m on a revised surplus in February 2009.
• In seasonally adjusted terms, the balance on goods and services was a surplus of $2,498m in March 2009, an increase of $746m on a revised surplus in February 2009.
• The increase in the seasonally adjusted surplus was primarily due to the fall in goods and services debits, mainly in other goods and capital goods.

CREDITS (EXPORTS OF GOODS & SERVICES)

• Seasonally adjusted, goods and services credits rose $16m to $24,647m. Rural goods rose $257m (10%) while other goods fell $139m (6%) and non-rural goods fell $126m (1%). Services credits rose $25m (1%).
• The rise in rural goods was largely driven by the cereal grains and cereal preparations component, which rose $249m (41%).

DEBITS (IMPORTS OF GOODS & SERVICES)

• Seasonally adjusted, goods and services debits fell $730m (3%) to $22,149m. Other goods fell $640m (33%), capital goods fell $563m (12%) and intermediate and other merchandise goods fell $207m (3%), while consumption goods rose $661m (15%). Services debits rose $19m.
• The fall in other goods was driven by non-monetary gold, down $806m (46%).
• The components in consumption goods with the largest increases were consumption goods n.e.s., up $206m (13%), textiles, clothing and footwear, up $134m (21%) and non-industrial transport equipment, up $104m (13%).

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE	Release Date
April 2009	4 June 2009
May 2009	2 July 2009
June 2009	5 August 2009
July 2009	3 September 2009
August 2009	6 October 2009
September 2009	5 November 2009

REVISIONS

Revisions have been made to incorporate the latest available data relating to merchandise trade and international trade in services. In original terms, these revisions have:

• decreased the surplus on goods and services for February 2009 by $356m
• increased the surplus for the eight months to February 2009 by $124m
• increased the deficit on goods and services for 2007-08 by $238m, with:
  • goods credits decreasing by $242m
  • goods debits decreasing by $4m.

CHANGES TO INFORMATION PAPER

The Information paper: Changes to international trade in goods industry statistics, July 2009 (cat. no. 5368.0.55.011) released on 18 December 2008 described changes to industry statistics being implemented in the July 2009 issue of this publication. Available with the information paper were correspondences between the relevant industry and commodity classifications. Since the release of the information paper one change has been made to the correspondences in Tables 1 and 2 and one industry code has been removed from Table 5. The updated tables are available from the Downloads tab of the information paper.


AVAILABILITY OF RELATED DATA

Commentary summarising the country breakdown for Australia's major trading partners for the calendar year 2008 will not be available in this issue due to the delay in the release of services calendar year data. As advised in the February 2009 issue, the services time series data cube Table 9 is available in this issue but other related data cubes will be released on 17 June 2009 (not 19 June as previously advised).


INFORMATION PAPER

The Information paper: Revisions to international standards in monthly international trade in goods and services statistics from August 2009 (cat. no. 5368.0.55.012) will be released on 4 June 2009. This paper outlines the changes to the international standards and the impact on the presentation of statistics in International Trade in Goods and Services, Australia (cat. no. 5368.0). It also describes the background to the changes, timing of the proposed changes and provides mock-ups of the proposed publications and the related spreadsheets.


INQUIRIES

For further information contact Selvi Sekhar on Canberra (02) 6252 5540 for goods, and Karen McGuigan on Canberra (02) 6252 5415 for services.