DUBLIN, Sept. 14 (Xinhua) -- Ireland's goods import growth for July 2018 outpaced its export growth by a big margin, resulting in a decline in its trade surplus in the month when compared with the same month last year.

Statistics released by the country's national statistics bureau CSO on Friday showed that in July, Ireland's imported goods grew by 40 percent to 7.6 billion euros (8.8 billion U.S. dollars) when compared with July 2017 while its exported goods only grew by 20 percent over a year ago to 11 billion euros.

The rapid rise in the country's imported goods in the month had led to a decline in its trade surplus. In July, Ireland's trade surplus stood at 3.4 billion euros, 400 million euros less than the 3.8-billion-euro trade surplus recorded in July 2017, said the CSO.

Despite the drop in July's trade surplus, the overall trade surplus for the country in the first seven months of this year was still on the rise, it said.

The CSO figures showed that in the January-July period of this year Ireland exported a total of 80.3 billion euros of goods while its total imports were valued at 49.3 billion euros with a trade surplus of 31 billion euros, which represented a year-on-year increase of nearly 17 percent.

Alan McQuaid, an economist with a local consulting company Merrion Fixed Income, said that while there are a lot of uncertainties regarding the outlook of the Irish external trade, they are still anticipating another strong performance this year. He predicted that the Irish goods imports and exports will achieve a record surplus of around 48 billion euros in 2018, up from 43.4 billion euros in 2017. (1 euro=1.163 U.S. dollars)