New Zealand's April trade surplus looked ''a bit wretched'' at $157 million compared with market expectations of $515 million, BNZ senior economist Craig Ebert said yesterday.
The difference was mainly a result of higher imports, which came in at $3.8 billion rather than the $3.52 billion anticipated.
Statistics New Zealand made much of the oil imports for the month but the level was not out of the ordinary. It was a case of oil being low last April, he said.
The biggest mover of the imports side was industrial supplies, excluding oil, which increased to 15% for April.
''Of course, this left a negative tone to the value of consumption and, more so, capital goods imports for April.
''Like a punk-rock poseur, April's merchandise trade report tried to look a bit deviant - but wasn't really,'' Mr Ebert said.
April's goods exports, while undershooting expectations, did so by only $100 million - all within the standard bounds of effort for the series, especially when agricultural export values had been ''thrown around''.
Rural exports were still solid. Dairy volumes were up around 8% on a year ago, he said.
On the same basis, meat exports were nearly 25% higher, reflecting not only the drought this year but the delayed meat-slaughtering last year on account of the superb growing conditions.
''We know this can't last much longer, as this year's drought eventually comes to bear in export shipments. We expect to see a major drop-off in export volumes of both dairy and meat products in the coming monthly trade statistics to reconcile with the negative production impacts we have already built into our GDP track.''
While the drop-off would be softened by the spike in dairy prices, it would be magnified in the case of meat exports given the generally lower prices they were receiving, Mr Ebert said.
The BNZ was still forecasting the external accounts to deteriorate to ''worrying proportions'' over 2014 and 2015.
