UAE remains top market for Japan

The UAE maintained its position as the largest market for Japanese products in the Middle East in the first quarter of 2012 after a sharp rise over the same quarter of last year, according to official Japanese data.

The UAE also emerged as the region’s second largest exporter to the Asian industrial giant after Saudi Arabia and the bulk of those exports included crude oil and gas, the Japanese External Trade Organization (Jetro) said.

Jetro’s latest statistics bulletin also showed higher oil prices boosted the total exports of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to Japan surged by around 30 per cent in the first quarter of 2012 over the same period of 2011.

From around $1.73 billion in the first quarter of 2011, Japan’s exports to the UAE soared to $2.42 billion in the first quarter of 2012, the report showed.

The UAE’s exports to Japan, mostly crude oil, gas and aluminium, also swelled from around $9.58 billion to $11.54 billon in the same period.

Saudi Arabia emerged as the top Gulf exporter to Japan with a total value of around $14.3 billion in the first quarter of 2012 compared with nearly $12.3 billion in the first quarter of 2011. But it was the second largest importer from that country, with a value of $2.09 billion in the first quarter of this year against about $1.6 billion in the first quarter of 2011.

The report showed the GCC’s combined exports to Japan jumped by around 30 per cent to $41.7 billon in the first quarter of 2012 from around $32.15 billion in the first quarter of 2011.

The group’s imports from the Asian nation also grew to nearly $6.61 billion from $4.73 billion in the same period.

The surge in exports widened the GCC’s trade surplus with their main economic and commercial partner 35 billion in the first quarter of this year from nearly $27.4 billion in the first quarter of 2011.

The report showed Qatar, the world’s third largest gas power, emerged as the third exporter to Japan in the Middle East because of a sharp rise in its LNG sales to that market over the past few years. Its exports soared to nearly $9.8 billion in the first quarter of 2012 from $6.38 billion in the first quarter of 2011.

Massive oil supplies have kept the GCC-Japan trade balance largely in favour of the 31-year-old Gulf alliance, with the surplus peaking at nearly $117 billion in 2008. It stood at about $122 billion last year.

Japan gets more than 80 per cent of its oil needs from the GCC, Iran, Iraq and other Middle Eastern crude producers. Saudi Arabia and the UAE alone supply it with more than two million bpd, nearly half its total oil imports.

Besides crude, the GCC’s exports to Japan include aluminium, natural gas, LNG and petroleum products, with the bulk of the aluminium supplies coming from Dubai and Bahrain. The GCC’s imports from that country comprise mainly electronics, vehicles, machinery, and other industrial products.

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