SYDNEY, Nov. 2 (Xinhua) -- Australia's trade surplus rose to 1.75 billion Australian dollars (1.35 billion U.S. dollars) in September from 872 million Australian dollars in August, fueled by an increase in exports, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Thursday.
Economists had expected the surplus to rise to 1.2 billion Australian dollars in September.
Exports grew 3 percent month-on-month while imports remained almost unchanged,
The higher export values were largely due to a 10 percent month-on-month rise in iron ore exports, "as a rise in volumes more than offset a price fall," Paul Dales, Chief Australia and New Zealand Economist at economic research consultancy Capital Economics, said in a note.
"In the third quarter as a whole, both export and import values hardly rose at all. But that's mainly due to the falls in export and import prices,"he said.
In volume terms, exports may have increased by about 4 percent quarter-on-quarter and imports may have gone up by about 3 percent, suggesting that net exports in the third quarter "broadly matched" the 0.3 percentage point contribution to real GDP growth in the second quarter, he said. (1 Australian dollar equals to 0.77 U.S. dollar)
