Date is here: Australia - September trade balance: AUD surplus 1.745bn (expected surplus AUD 1.2bn)

Also: Australian trade balance - responses coming in

Via CBA now (I've summarised):

  • trade surplus ... was well above expectations
  • largely driven by a surge in iron ore exports, with both prices and volume.. increasing in the month
  • Exports of non-monetary gold, a small but volatile component of trade. rose by a strong 18.9% in the month
  • In trend terms, the goods surplus has narrowed this year after peaking at a record surplus of $4.65 bn in December 2016
  • Lower commodity prices have weighed on export receipts and reduced the surpluses
  • The CBA commodity price index is down around 17% since the peak in December last year
  • Nonetheless ongoing trade surpluses are a positive indicator for company profits and government revenues
  • Imports of consumption good and intermediate goods have largely gone sideways in recent months. But imports of capital goods are trending higher which may be related to strong infrastructure spending.
  • Services exports rose by 1.4% in the month, while imports fell by 1.3%

Our forecast is for net exports to add around 0.1 ppts to 03 GDP growth.

(bolding mine on the GDP impact)