Australia has notched up its highest monthly trade deficit on record, driven largely by a slump in coal and iron ore exports.
Australia's trade balance deficit ballooned to $3.89 billion in April, following a revised deficit of $1.23 billion for the previous month.
Exports fell six per cent, while imports rose four per cent, the Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed on Thursday.
The result was much worse than the deficit of $2.05 billion economists had been expecting.
JP Morgan economist Tom Kennedy described the trade data as a "disaster", noting it was the worst result since records began in 1971.
Tumbling coal and iron ore exports were to blame, he said.
"The drag was evenly split between iron ore and coal, with values in each category sinking by more than $800 million Australian dollars."
Some $1.6 billion of the $2.7 billion rise in the deficit between March and April was accounted for by lower revenue for coal, iron ore, fossil fuels and other minerals.
On the imports side, the biggest contributor to the blowout was capital goods - the machinery, equipment and vehicles used by businesses - which jumped $546 million to $6.1 billion.
Mr Kennedy said the slump in coal exports was probably temporary and linked to bad weather delaying shipments from ports along the east coast in April.
He said the weakness in iron ore was more fundamental, pointing to both lower shipment volumes and prices for Australia's biggest export.
Annual exports to China, a major buyer of iron ore, hit a 21-month low in April, and were down 19.2 per cent on the same month in 2014.
Partially offsetting this fall were exports to India, which hit a record $3.5 billion, up 28.5 per cent from April last year.
UBS economists Scott Haslem and George Tharenou said the pick up in imports was broad-based across, capital, intermediate and consumer goods.
"Recent trends show a clear acceleration in the value of consumer and capital goods," they said in a note to clients.
The weak trade figures suggested a softer start for second quarter economic growth after Wednesday's better-than-expected GDP numbers for the three months to March, the UBS economists said.
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