Colombian imports drop for the fourth consecutive month

According to the latest report from the National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), the value of Colombian imports in April 2023 decreased compared to the same month last year.

This is a reduction of 22.7%, which in US dollars (USD) amounts to USD 1,942.6 billion CIF. Thus, while in April 2022 Colombian imports had a value of USD $6,393.1 billion, in April 2023 this was USD $4,942.6 billion.

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Although the CIF value of total Colombian imports is much lower than a year ago, it is higher than the value of imports in April 2021, 2020, and 2019. In the latter year, before the Covid-19 pandemic began, Colombian imports declared to the country’s customs administrations amounted to USD $4,528.5 billion.

The main group that explains the drop in April is that of Manufactures, considering that it had an annual variation of -22.7% and participated in April 2023 with 72.8% of the total value of imports.

Other sectors also presented a negative variation in imports between April 2022 and April 2023. Fuels and extractive industries were -38.8%, Agriculture, food and beverages -9.5%, and Other sectors -47.8%.

In terms of share of total import value, the Manufacturing group was followed by Agriculture, food and beverages (17.6%), Fuels and products of extractive industries (9.5%), and Other sectors (0.1%).

Manufactures: the group with the highest value in Colombian imports

Contrary to what happens with our country’s exports, which are mainly specialized in the group of Fuels and products of the extractive industries, the weight of the group of Manufactures in Colombian imports is of great relevance.

Within this group, machinery and transportation equipment were the goods with the highest Colombian demand. In April 2023 they represented purchases worth USD $1,467.7 billion and registered a variation of -26.7% compared to April 2022.

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In the group of Manufactures, the value of Colombian imports of Chemicals and related products in April 2023 (USD $1,124.7 billion) had a variation of -25.4% compared to the values of a year ago (USD $1,508.5 billion) and ranked second within the group.

In third place were manufactured goods by material, whose variation was -14.5% between April 2022 and April 2023 (USD $1,508.5 billion and USD $1,124.7 billion, respectively).

Miscellaneous manufactured articles had a variation of -7.2% between April 2023 and the same month of 2022 as the value of purchases decreased from USD $382.2 million to USD $354.6 million.

Imports in 2023 have dropped

DANE also revealed that imports between January and April 2023 have dropped, compared to the first four months of 2022, behavior in which the group of Manufactures contributed -13.8 percentage points (p.p.) to the total variation since it went from USD $18,939.9 billion to USD $15,442.9 billion respectively.

The group that registered the lowest variation from one year to another was Agriculture, food and beverages (-3.2%). In the first four months of 2022, purchases were declared for USD $3,600.1, while in the same period of 2023, they were for USD $3,484.5 billion.

Thus, Colombia went from importing goods worth USD $25,333.7 billion CIF between January and April 2022 to buying goods worth USD $21,387 billion CIF from the rest of the world.

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