Despite a month-on-month fall, Australian exports remain strong due largely to ongoing demand for the nation’s resource commodities, in particular iron ore from major trading partners across Asia, and gas.

The resources industry’s strong contribution is included in the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) preliminary international trade in goods figures.

While the value of exports and imports of goods both decreased in April 2020, demand for resource commodities remained strong.

The preliminary figures show that exports fell $4 billion or 12 per cent from the record high figure in March 2020 of $35,797m.

Driving the decrease was a $1.7 billion decrease in exports of non-monetary gold following significant trade last month (trade in non-monetary gold is volatile and large month-to-month movements are not uncommon). Smaller decreases were also observed in other major resource commodities including iron ore, coal, gas and petroleum.

Year-on-year, the value of imports in April 2020 was down 7 per cent on April 2019 with large decreases in the value of imports of petroleum and road vehicles.