"We can't expect anything fantastic. There'll be no breakthrough in exports either in January or February, or March. We can expect a slow growth in exports," Vilija Tauraitė told BNS.
"On the one hand, demand from foreign markets will not be high. On the other hand, Lithuania's export competitiveness improved significantly during the crisis," she said.
In December, the country's exports fell by 2.7 percent, compared to November, to 6.019 billion litas (EUR 1.74 b) and imports were down by 7.3 percent, data from Statistics Lithuania shows.
"The domestic market remained quite strong at the end of the year, but exports reacted more sensitively, which was signaled by industry and transport results," Tauraite said.
Although the decline in December could have been caused by seasonal factors, a slowdown in exports was observed in the last months of 2011, the analyst said.
"First of all, this (slowdown in export) is happening due to lower demand from our export partners. We can already see an annual growth slowdown in two commodity groups, textiles and vehicles, which we did not observe either in 2010 or 2011. The outlook for exports in 2012, particularly in the first half, is not very optimistic," she said.
Lithuania's exports rose by 28.9 percent last year compared with 2010 to a total of 69.643 billion litas (EUR 20.2 b). Imports went up by 28.2 percent to 78.16 billion litas, statistics office announced on Thursday.
Last year, Lithuania's foreign trade deficit widened by 23.2 percent to 8.517 billion litas, according to provisional data based on customs declarations and Intrastat reports.
