Rural goods led a surprise increase in November’s international trade surplus, rising to $7.08 billion - a $1.33bn more than the forecast $5.75bn, figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show.
Exports climbed 4.8% month-on-month in November from 3.5% in October - its biggest monthly rise for the last 15 months, while imports crept up a nominal 1.7%, driven by fuels and lubricants.
The biggest component of the rise in exports were rural goods, which increased $968m (18.1%), driven by non-specific rural goods such as sugar and honey, which rose a substantial $778m, or 34.6%
There was an uptick in food retail of 0.5%to $76.6m, with supermarkets and liquor retailing both up 0.6% and 0.7% respectively, while other specialised food retailing fell 0.4%.
Household goods rose 0.6% for $38.5m, with a 2.2% rise for furniture.
For commodities, iron ore quantities bounced back from October falls, with Fe fines up 4.9% to $617m, while lump increased 2.3% to $100m for the month.
A rise of 13% in exports of thermal coal quantities during November was not enough to support overall coal exports, with decreases of 19.8% and 5.4% for semi-soft and coking coal respectively.
Realised prices increased though, with hard coking coal up (8.1%) at $52m, semi-soft (6.1%) and thermal $442m.
LNG exports rose 2.6%, exporting $143m for the month.
Pairing of the AUD/USD was down 0.29% at time of writing to trade at 0.6198.
