Eurozone registers 81.8b euro trade surplus in 2012

BRUSSELS - The eurozone's trade in goods recorded a surplus of 81.8 billion euro (109.2 billion US dollars) in 2012, compared with a deficit of 15.7 billion euro in 2011, Eurostat said Friday.

The Eurostat data also showed that the 27-nation European Union (EU) recorded a deficit of 104.6 billion euro in 2012, which was an improvement on the previous year's deficit of 162.7 billion euro.

In December 2012, euro area's trade in goods balance with the rest of the world delivered a 11.7 billion euro surplus, compared with a surplus of eight billion in the same period of 2011.

For the EU, the figure was 700 million euro deficit in the last month of 2012, compared with 200 million in December 2011.

Eurostat also published trade figures for each member state over the first 11 month of 2012.

The data showed that the largest surplus was observed in Germany at 174.6 billon euro followed by the Netherlands, Ireland and the Czech Republic, while Britain registered the largest deficit at 152.9 billion euro, followed by France, Spain and Greece.