05/10/2011 (Jakarta Post) - The Central Statistics Agency (BPS) on Tuesday announced that bilateral trade between Indonesia and China was becoming more balanced, with Indonesia now enjoying a lower trade deficit.

“In previous months our trade deficit with China was in hundreds of millions of US dollars, but then it dropped to tens of millions. [In August] the deficit stood at merely $61 million,” BPS chief Rusman Heriawan said in Jakarta, while addressing a press conference on statistics reports per August.

He added that at the end of 2010, Indonesia’s trade deficit with China stood between $5 billion and $7 billion.

“The growth of our exports to China has been higher than [the growth of] our imports from China,” Rusman said, as quoted by tribunnews.com.

He added, however, that Indonesia still mostly exported raw materials to China, in contrast to the processed products such as machinery, chemical products, vehicles and plastic items that China exports to Indonesia.

“That is unavoidable. China still needs our raw materials such as [crude palm oil] and coal,” Rusman said.