Instant view - August trade deficit narrows more than expected

LONDON (Reuters) -

LONDON Oct 13 (Reuters) - Britain's goods trade deficit narrowed more than expected in August as export values hit a record high and import values fell slightly, official data showed on Thursday.

KEY POINTS

- Highest export value since monthly records began in January 1998

ANALYSTS' QUOTES:

PHILIP SHAW, INVESTEC

"The figures are better than expected, they show a fall in the total balance in trade on goods helped by a rise in exports -- perhaps not one you would have expected in this environment.

The figures come with the usual caveat, that you can't trust one month's numbers and that therefore we shouldn't get too enthusiastic about them. There are no real policy implications on this though."

"An additional point is that the national accounts revisions have increased in estimates of the services balance coming close to around 6 billion pounds a month, which has resulted in the total trade balance coming in at a deficit of less than 2 billion pounds this time around."

ALAN CLARKE, SCOTIA CAPITAL

"At face value it does look like very good news. I guess the health warning with this release, along with a lot of the other ones we've been getting, is the revisions to the historical data.

"Even so, it's a decent improvement on the month and may yet help to give us a decent third quarter GDP. But we'll obviously have to delve into the fine detail of the revisions to get the full picture."