Status: 04/13/2023 12:07 p.m
Russia’s once great importance in German foreign trade has lost value: the country fell from eleventh place to 46th place among the most important suppliers of goods. Energy supplies are particularly badly affected.
Since the start of the Russian attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Russia’s importance for German foreign trade has drastically decreased. Imports from Russia fell by 91 percent in February 2023 compared to the same month last year. This was announced by the Federal Statistical Office.
The value of the goods imported from Russia was only 300 million euros, after 3.7 billion euros in February 2022. “Russia fell from eleventh to 46th place among Germany’s most important suppliers of goods,” the authority explained.
Germany hardly imports any energy from Russia anymore
For a good year now, the federal government has been working on reducing dependence on Russia as an energy supplier. This February, Germany imported oil and natural gas worth a total of six billion euros. As the Federal Statistical Office has now announced, imports of Russian oil and natural gas fell to just 4.2 million euros.
For comparison: the year before, imports amounted to 2.2 billion euros, which represents a minus of almost 100 percent. And the imports of coke oven and mineral oil products as well as coal fell drastically to 30 and 26 million euros.
German exports to Russia overtake imports
Exports of German goods to Russia have also fallen sharply. In February 2023 they amounted to 0.8 billion euros, which corresponds to a decrease of more than 60 percent compared to the previous year. The value of the exported goods was thus 0.5 billion euros higher than the value of the goods imported from Russia.
“This was the first monthly export surplus in trade with Russia since December 2020,” the statistics office said. In February 2022 there was still an import surplus of 1.6 billion euros.