Japan posts trade surplus in Dec on cheaper oil, strong yen

Last year’s sales of magazines fell 8.4 percent year-on-year to an estimated 780.1 billion yen, while those of books were down 1.7 percent to 741.9 billion yen, according to the survey.

Japan’s trade balance has been in the negative for 49 of the 58 months since the March 2011 quake and tsunami, which forced the government to shut down its nuclear reactors and increase reliance on energy imports.

The figures showed Japan recorded its fifth-straight annual trade deficit, but the latest figure narrowed by 78 percent from 2014 to 2.83 trillion yen ($23.8 billion).

This brought the trade surplus to 140.2 billion yen (US$1.18 billion), compared with estimates for a surplus of 100.0 billion yen.

Moreover, Japan’s trade balance swung to a surplus in December, as an 18 percent annual drop in imports offset the 8 percent drop in exports. After rising by 7.9 percent in January-June over the same period the year before, exports gained by a scant 0.6 percent in July-December.

Japan’s exports fell the most in more than three years in December from a year earlier, stoking fears of economic contraction in the final quarter of 2015 as a slowdown in China and emerging markets takes its toll on the export-reliant economy.

Sales of books and magazines peaked in 1996 at an estimated 2.7 trillion yen and have since shrunk to less than 60 percent of that level. Meanwhile, the prolonged bout of low crude oil prices – normally a boon for a resource-scarce country like Japan which imports nearly all of its oil and gas – is hindering progress toward a 2 percent inflation goal meant to mark the end of a long spell of growth-dampening deflation. But it added that, “With export momentum still weak, industrial production should continue to flat-line”.

Japan’s shipments to the United States grew 11.5 percent to ¥15.22 trillion on the back of robust vehicle exports, while imports expanded 6.8 percent to ¥8.05 trillion.

Dragged down by weak magazine sales, the overall sales of publications extended losses from the previous year’s 4.5 percent fall, according to the survey of the Research Institute for Publications.