The Brazilian agribusiness trade balance data for February are already available. This month, the value of goods traded abroad reached US$ 9.9 billion, a 5.7% decrease when compared to the same period in 2022. The results followed a retraction of the entire Brazilian trade balance. Still, at the month’s end, agriculture and livestock products had a surplus of US$ 8.6 billion.
In February, the leading product in our agribusiness export line was soybean, which made up 29.2% of total exports and yielded US$ 2.9 billion in revenue, a decrease of 8.1% compared to the same period in 2022. The second most exported product was cellulose, which increased 72.7% when compared to February 2022 and brought in US$ 755.6 million. The other remarkable exports in the Brazilian agribusiness line were fresh chicken meat and corn.
Brazil’s main export destination in February 2023 was China, with a share of 30.7%, followed by the European Union (15.8%) and the United States (7.5%). Other countries also had remarkable shares: Thailand (2.9%), Japan (2.6%), Argentina (2.4%), Saudi Arabia (2.3%), South Korea (2%), Indonesia (1.7%), and Vietnam (1.7%).
Some destination countries showed a significant performance in February 2023 compared to February 2022. Among these countries, the highlights are Argentina (+93.2%), driven by soybean exports (an increase of US$ 127.6 million); and Japan (+50.2%), driven by corn sales (an increase of US$ 126.9 million).
Trade balance highlight: cellulose
In 2022, Brazilian cellulose exports were approximately 19.8 million tons, an increase of 21.8% compared to the previous year, the biggest volume in the analyzed period, 2013-2023.
In 2023, Brazil’s cellulose exports reached an accumulated figure of US$ 1.5 billion from January to February, the second-best result in the period analyzed, 2013-2023. This performance is 41.1% higher than the one seen in the same period in 2022. In 2023, the three main destination countries for exports of this product are China (33.8% of the total); the European Union (19.0%); and the United States (13.7%).
Regarding cellulose’s international prices, according to the Federal Reserve Economic Data, there is an ascending trend beginning in May 2022. In the period analyzed, 2013-2023, the peak in product prices occurred in November 2022. In 2023, the data for cellulose are available until January, showing an index of 258.03, which corresponds to a 21.7% growth compared to the index for the same period in 2022.