Falling oil prices bring Japan's trade deficit down over 88 pct in FY 2015

The Japanese government said Wednesday that its trade deficit declined 88.2 percent from a year earlier to 1.08 trillion yen (around 9.90 billion U.S. dollars) in the fiscal 2015 that ended on March 31 due to continuous falling prices of crude oil.

The Finance Ministry here said that the value of crude oil imports was down 37.9 percent as oil prices lowered 45.3 percent on year, while values of liquefied natural gas decreased 41.4 percent. The country relies greatly on energy imports to meet the domestic energy needs since the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power disaster.

Japan's exports fell 0.7 percent for the first time in three years to 679.38 billion dollars, while that of imports dropped 10.3 percent to 689.28 billion dollars in the reporting period, said the ministry in a preliminary report.

While in March, Japan logged a about 6.96 billion dollars trade surplus with exports down 6.8 percent on year to 59.21 billion dollars and imports declining 14.9 percent to about 52.25 billion dollars. Endit