Cabo Verde’s trade balance was negative by over €172.2 million in the first quarter of 2022, 23.1% worse than the same period of 2020, according to official figures released on Monday.
According to the quarterly report on foreign trade statistics from Cabo Verde’s National Statistics Institute (INE), this performance was aggravated by the increase in imports, compared to 2021, which grew 22.9% from January to March this year, to 19.9 billion escudos (€180.7 million).
Exports rose 18.1% year-on-year to 934 million escudos (€8.5 million) in March, while re-exports rose 71.3% to 6.6 billion escudos (€59.8 million).
With this performance, Cabo Verde’s trade balance was again negative in the first quarter, at 18.99 billion escudos (€172.2 million), compared to a deficit of 15.425 billion escudos (€139.9 million) in the same period of 2021.
According to the INE, Europe “remains the main customer of Cabo Verde,” absorbing 96.4% of all Cabo Verdean exports and with Spain leading the list of the archipelago’s main customers, with a 57.1% share of the total.
The biggest exports by Cabo Verde in February were prepared and preserved fish (70.5% of total sales), clothing (11.3%) and footwear (7.8%).
The European continent also continues to be Cabo Verde’s main supplier, accounting for 70.6% of the total.
Portugal was once again the leading supplier to Cabo Verde in the first quarter of this year with 43.8% of total CaboVerdean imports, followed by Spain (8.2%), Italy (5.3%), the Netherlands (4.7%) and Brazil (4.5%).
Cabo Verde’s trade balance was in deficit for the whole of 2021, at €642.8 million, increasing 10.5% and nullifying the recovery in the previous year, according to data released earlier by INE.
In 2021, exports rose 1.3% compared to 2020, to 5.17 billion escudos (€46.5 million), and imports increased 9.9%, to 76.56 billion escudos (€689.3 million).
Re-exports, meanwhile, increased 26.6% compared to 2020, to 18.95 billion escudos (€170.6 million).
With this performance, Cabo Verde’s trade balance was again negative in 2021, at 71.39 billion escudos (€642.8 million), completely nullifying the improvement (-10.6%) from 2019 to 2020, which was then the best annual result – a deficit of 64.6 billion escudos (€583.5 million) -, since 2016, according to INE history, mainly due to the drop in imports because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
