Mubasher: Qatar’s trade surplus with Japan grew 5% year-on-year in July, according to the Japanese Ministry of Finance's (MoF) monthly bulletin released on Thursday.

Trade surplus between the two countries amounted to JPY 99.12 billion ($892.1 million) in July, compared to JPY 91.36 billion ($822.2 million) in the same month a year earlier.

The ministry attributed the increase in trade surplus to the rise in Qatar’s exports to Japan by 3.4% to JPY 107.33 billion ($966 million) last month, from JPY 9.49 billion ($85.4 million) in July 2017.

Meanwhile, Qatar’s total imports from the Asian nation declined 13.4% year-on-year to JPY 8.21 billion ($73.9 million) in July, the data showed.

For the first half of 2018, the trade surplus between the two countries hiked 28.8% to JPY 711 billion, compared to JPY 552.1 billion in the same period of the prior year.