The euro zone's trade balance with the rest of the world climbed to a 2.4-billion-euro (1 euro equals 1.31 U.S. dollars) surplus in the year to October 2006, according to an estimate by Eurostat, the statistical service of the European Union (EU), on Monday.
The September 2006 trade balance was a surplus of 2.1 billion euros. In October 2005, the balance was a tiny surplus of only 0.1 billion euros.
In October 2006, seasonally adjusted euro zone exports remained stable, while imports rose by 0.6 percent on the September 2006 figure, said Eurostat.
The first estimate for October 2006 extra-EU trade was a deficit of 13.2 billion euros, compared with a deficit of 11.0 billion euros in October 2005.
In September 2006, the balance was a deficit of 13.2 billion euros, compared with a deficit of 9.6 billion euros in September 2005.
In October 2006, compared with September 2006, EU exports, seasonally adjusted, fell by 1.2 percent and imports by 0.4 percent.
The first nine months of 2006 saw strong growth in the EU energy trade deficit, which rose to 214.2 billion euros from 159.9 billion euros in January-September 2005.
In this period, the EU's trade surpluses rose in the chemicals sector and for machinery and vehicles.
EU's trade with its major partners grew in the first nine months. The most notable increases were for exports to Russia (23 percent), China (22 percent), Canada (16 percent) and Turkey (15 percent). The biggest increases for imports were from Russia (32 percent), Norway (29 percent), China (20 percent) and India (19 percent).
The EU's trade surplus with the United States increased but decreased with Switzerland. The EU's trade deficit grew strongly with countries including Russia and Norway, and slightly with Japan.
Of all EU member states, Germany had the largest surplus of 115.5 billion euros, followed by the Netherlands (26.4 billion), Ireland (25.2 billion) and Sweden (13.0 billion).
Britain registered the largest deficit of 96.9 billion euros, followed by Spain, France, Greece and Italy.
