A report by the Ministry of Economy and Finance indicates that Côte d'Ivoire's trade balance declined in 2020. The trade balance fell from 1,307.4 billion FCFA at the end of December 2019 to 1,054.5 billion FCFA over the same period in 2020, a decrease of 252.9 billion

The Ministry of Economy and Finance notes that this decrease is due to the health crisis linked to Covid-19, which has impacted “external trade in special trade goods and excluding exceptional goods, due to the disruption of marketing circuits” as well as the decrease in “demand for certain products”.

“There was a trade surplus of 1,054.5 billion, down 12.5%, compared to the surplus of 1,307.4 billion recorded in 2019,” says the report, which states that “the rate of coverage of imports by exports was 117.2%, down 2.4 percentage points compared to 2019,” the report reads.

Exports and imports in value fell by 7.167.8 billion FCFA (-3.8%) and 6.113.2 billion FCFA (-0.5%) respectively at the end of December 2020 against 7.450.8 billion FCFA and 6.143.3 billion FCFA in 2019. The document states that the drop in export value is due to the lack of sales of processed products (-5.2%) and mining products (-5.4%). On the other hand, exports of primary products grew by 0.5%, due to a price increase of 2.0%, which offset the fall