Dairying again led a fall in export value in the latest quarter, with China being supplanted by Australia as our biggest export destination.
While the value of exported goods fell 3%, to $12 billion, imports rose 3.7%, to $13 billion, the latter because of large aircraft imports, which otherwise would have seen imports barely changed, up by just 0.2%.
Following a 7.5% export fall for the quarter to June, the seasonally adjusted value of exported goods for the quarter to September fell 3%, to $12 billion, Statistics New Zealand (SNZ) data showed yesterday.
ASB rural economist Nathan Penny said the $1.35 billion trade deficit, for the month of September, was the third in a row, and the largest monthly trade deficit on record.
''New Zealand's September trade data came in significantly weaker than our and market expectations,'' he said.
Much of this record was due to a temporary spike in aircraft imports, plus other capital imports, with the aircraft and parts imports jumping from $27 million in September last year to $459 million this year.
Excluding those large, often one-off items, that trimmed the September trade balance to a deficit of $919 million.
Green Party co-leader Dr Russel Norman said National's strategy ''to hang all economic hope'' on exporting ever-increasing volumes of milk powder and logs, was shown to be misguided.
The trade deficit was $1 billion for the quarter to September and $1.4 billion for the month of September, equating to 37% of exports.
''Not only is the idea of relying on ever-increasing volumes of dairy production bad for the environment, it is bad economics to depend so heavily on one product,'' Dr Norman said.
National was not putting enough into research and development to support the development of high-value exports, which would not only create more jobs, diversity and wealth, but added-value products were less vulnerable to market vagaries, he said.
Westpac senior economist Michael Gordon said while dairy exports were up 1.5% by volume, there was a 2.4% fall in prices.
He added a cautionary note, that the time lag between price-setting and the shipment of dairy products was about three months, ''so the full extent of the slide in world dairy prices this year has yet to come through in the trade figures.''
Global dairy auction prices are down almost on 50% on February prices, and while the latest auction last week lifted, that was off a five-year low.
Milk powder, butter and cheese fell 12% to $798 million. Logs, wood and wood articles fell by 31% to $250 million.
