Ronald Orellana, Statistician II
"Starting with the merchandise imports, we have a line graph showing how imports have performed over the past 10 years for the first two months of January and February. Despite a current decrease in imports when compared to 2024, imports have been on an upward trend since 2021. The total merchandise imports for the first two months of the year amounted to 461 million dollars, down 7.8% or 38.8 million dollars when compared to imports for the first two months in 2024. Going on to the categories that contributed to this overall decrease in imports, we have the machinery and transport equipment category who saw the steepest decline in the first 2 months of the year, falling by 27.4 million dollars to 116 million. this is mainly due to a high value purchase on an industrial generator made that same period last year when imports within this category reached 143.8 million."

"Here we have a line graph showing how exports have performed over the past 10 years within the first two months. In general, exports have been on a downward trend with notable fluctuations across most of these years. The total domestic exports for the first two months of 2025 amounted to 40.4 million, representing a growth of 70.7% or 3 million compared to the same period in 2024. Let's look at the top exported products that contributed to this overall increase in exports. The marine exports saw the largest increase with earnings doubling during this period, rising from 3.2 million to 6.6 million. This increase is primarily driven by higher exports of whole lobster, lobster tails and conch."