Mexican exports rise 12.3 pct in February

MEXICO CITY, March 27 (Xinhua) -- Mexican exports increased 12.3 percent in February year on year to reach 35.21 billion U.S. dollars, boosted by manufacturing and oil exports to the United States, the government's statistics bureau Inegi said Tuesday.

In a report, Inegi also praised the fact that imports rose 11.7 percent year on year to reach 34.148 billion dollars.

This provided Mexico with a trade surplus of 1.062 billion dollars, after two straight months of trade deficit.

According to the data, manufacturing exports grew 10.5 percent, and oil exports saw a year-on-year growth of 36.6 percent, which largely drove this expansion.

This year has seen robust Mexican exports, with a combined growth of 12.4 percent for the first two months, while imports grew by 12.9 percent.

Mexican trade is largely dependent on the United States, its main partner in NAFTA, the free-trade agreement which has been the lynchpin of North American trade since 1994 and is being renegotiated.

The financial group Banorte issued a statement to its clients on Tuesday, saying the dynamism in manufacturing exports was likely to continue, given good economic growth prospects in the United States.

It said Mexican trade had been helped by a relatively weak peso, due to uncertainty surrounding NAFTA talks and the upcoming presidential election in July.

Mexico, Latin America's second largest economy after Brazil, saw 2 percent of economic growth in 2017, down from 2.9 percent in 2016.

Mexico's central bank has predicted that GDP will expand between 2 and 3 percent in 2018. Enditem