TRADE SURPLUS WILL POSE ADDED PRESSURES FOR JAPAN Japan today announced another mammoth monthly trade surplus that economists said would be sure to intensify already mounting pressure on the country for action. "The world has every reason to be furious with Japan for not moving more quickly," Jardine Fleming (Securities) Ltd economist Eric Rasmussen said. The Finance Ministry said today that the trade surplus soared to 8.14 billion dlrs in February from 5.7 billion in January and 4.77 billion a year ago. The current account surplus, which includes trade in services as well as goods, climbed to 7.38 billion dlrs last month from 4.95 billion in January and 3.89 billion a year ago. After being adjusted for seasonal fluctuations, the figures look a bit better, but not much. On that basis, the trade surplus declined slightly in February to 9.16 billion dlrs from a record 9.58 billion in January. "In the medium term we expect this modest improvement to continue but the pace of progress may be too slow to ward off further protectionism or further yen strength," said William Stirling, economist at Merrill Lynch Japan Inc. A strong yen would make Japanese goods more expensive on world markets while making imports into the country cheaper. "On a seasonally adjusted basis, we appear to be making some progress on getting exports down," Jardine's Rasmussen said. But imports do not seem to be picking up much because the Japanese economy remains sluggish, he said. Finance Ministry officials blamed last month's slower import growth on a decline in oil imports as refiners worked off stocks they had built up in January. The officials took comfort from a decline in the volume of exports last month, after an unexpected year-on-year increase in January. This means the effects of the two-year rise of the yen against the U.S. Dollar are finally beginning to have an impact on exports, they said. But economists warned that may not be soon enough for Japan's trading partners.