Algeria's food imports in January hit 816 million U.S. dollars with an 18.8-percent year-on-year increase, the Customs' National Center for Statistics and Data ( CNIS) said on Wednesday.
The statistic agency was quoted by the official APS news agency as saying that all food items, except meat, sugar and sweets, saw a considerable rise in amount of import despite a 6-percent drop of the North African nation's overall imports bill.
Particularly, cereals, wheat semolina and flour combined witnessed a significant increase of 44.98 percent with the total amounting to 296 million U.S. dollars. This group represents a lion share of Algeria's imported food, taking up as much as 37 percent of the total imports.
Also, imports of the "coffee and tea" group also showed a dramatic increase of 55.2 percent with the total amounting to 29.9 million U.S. dollars.
According to the CNIS data, Algeria also registered a 91- percent year-on-year rise in monthly trade surplus in January, which hit 2.2 billion U.S. dollars.