Philippine imports fell 1.3 percent year-on-year to 4.157 billion U.S. dollars in December 2006, the National Statistics Office (NSO) said on Tuesday.

NSO said the weak imports performance was due to slower orders of raw materials and electronic products.

For the full year 2006, imports grew 8.7 percent to 52.522 billion U.S. dollars, bringing the country's trade deficit for the year to 5.485 billion U.S. dollars, lower than the 6.163 billion U. S. dollars deficit recorded in 2005. Total Philippine exports for 2006 logged in at 47.037 billion U.S. dollars.

NSO said electronics products made up 50 percent of the import bill in December at 2.079 billion U.S. dollars.

Oil related products had the second largest share of the imports bill, accounting for 13.4 percent or 558.30 million U.S. dollars.

This was 17.7 percent bigger than the amount recorded a year earlier due to higher volumes of gasoline, diesel and aviation gasoline imported, NSO said.

The United States was the country's biggest source of imports in December. It accounted for 17.9 percent of the receipt, or 742. 01 million U.S. dollars, according to NSO.

Japan accounted for the second largest imports shipment, with 14.2 percent or 589.26 million U.S. dollars of total imports.

Source: Xinhua