When Ivan Acosta, the Minister of Finance and Public Credit (Ministerio de Hacienda y Crédito Público – MHCP) spoke to the press last Friday, he revealed that the Nicaraguan Exports for April continued the trend upwards.
When April’s numbers are included with the 2021 first quarter results, exports for the first 4 months of 2021 grew 11.3% over the same period last year.
The first quarter 2021 results that were already announced for commodities or primary goods such as; agriculture, gold, fishing, sugar, exportable grains, tobacco show an overall growth of 11.8 percent when compared with the same period in 2020.
Gold continues to be the darling of the export products, assisted by good international prices and higher national production, the FOB1 price of gold exports are growing at the rate of 48.8%. Mining as a sector is showing a good level of activity and as a result is growing at the rate of 30.5%.
First quarter 2021 exports reached US $928.53 million (with a volume of 703.8 million kilograms). The same period in 2020 was US $827.44 million (volume was 759.37 kilograms). The average export price per kilo of all goods rose from 1.09 US cents per kg to 1.32 per kg. Gold was the biggest factor in that increase.
Products that were up on the same period last year were cane sugar, petroleum products, beverages, spirits and vinegars. Products that lost ground were beans, tobacco, seeds, forage products and beef.
By Top Ten countries, the United States, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Mexico and Guatemala stand out as the top 5 biggest buyers of Nicaraguan exports. Taiwan is growing and buying more (US $27 million) than the best European country which was Belgium with US $25 million, followed by the United Kingdom with US $20 million dollars, Italy at US $19 million and Honduras with 18.6 million. 78% of all Nicaraguan exports go to those first 10 countries. Source: APEN – Association of Producers and Exporters of Nicaragua.
Nicaragua closed 2020 having exported goods valued at 2.993 Billion US$. Acosta was confident that with moderate growth, Nicaragua could be looking at a figure of over 3 Billion US$ for the end of 2021 and with a greater volume of production.
1 – FOB or Free On Board is a shipping term meaning the seller quotes a price including the cost of delivering goods to the nearest port. The buyer is then responsible for all shipping expenses, in this case from that Nicaraguan port to its final destination.
