Australia's trade surplus is set to hit a ten-year low as imports for
data-centre chips and servers and sharply higher energy costs push up the import
bill, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday. September imports
rose over 13% to A$45.2bn (second only to August's record); exports rose about
10% to A$48.0bn, leaving a monthly surplus of A$2.8bn. The cumulative trade
surplus for the first nine months was slightly above A$17.0bn, the weakest in
ten years. Strong commodity exports persist, but record-priced fuel purchases
and robust demand for Chinese-made cars and for chips from South Korea and
Taiwan has swollen imports, narrowing net exports and weighing on GDP growth.
