In its 14th-consecutive month of year-on-year decline, the nation's trade surplus plunged 47.2 percent in August to 320.25 billion yen, the Finance Ministry said Thursday in a preliminary report.
Exports decreased 8.8 percent to 3.83 trillion yen, down for the fifth month in a row, and imports fell 2.4 percent to 3.51 trillion yen, the first decrease in 22 months.
The ministry attributed the lower surplus to declines in exports of office equipment, semiconductors and other electronics parts that more than offset falls in imports of the same products, reflecting the global slump in the information technology market.