Falls in Japan's current account surplus and China's trade surplus

It is not too often that you see falls in both Japan and China's trade balances.

AFP/CNA reports Japan's current account for January:

The surplus in the current account, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, declined 7.6 percent in January from a year earlier to 719.1 billion yen (6.05 billion dollars), the finance ministry said...

The trade account alone registered a deficit of 209.4 billion yen in January, compared to a surplus of 332.3 billion yen a year earlier...

Exports rose 13.1 percent to 4.76 trillion yen in January, up for a 26th straight month, while imports jumped 28.1 percent to 4.97 trillion yen, the 23rd consecutive monthly increase.

Bloomberg reports China's trade balance for February:

The surplus fell to $2.45 billion from $9.49 billion in January, the customs bureau said today on its Web site. That was below the median $7.5 billion forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. Imports jumped 30 percent as higher oil prices boosted the value of overseas purchases...

Exports rose 22 percent after jumping 28 percent in January. Sales may have slowed because some businesses rushed to fill orders ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, which fell in January this year and in February in 2005, Hui said.

In other news on these two economies, Japan's fourth quarter GDP was revised down slightly to 1.3 percent or 5.4 percent in annualised terms, Japan's consumer confidence index edged up in February, China's actual foreign direct investment for the January-February period rose 7.79 pct year-on-year, and China's consumer inflation rate slowed to 0.9 percent year-on-year in February.