338 Earnings from oilseeds, Ethiopia’s second largest export since 2004/05, grew by an average of 40.8  percent over the past five years.  Higher demand from Asian countries, particularly China, pushed up prices. The share of export earnings from oilseeds jumped from only 7.2 percent in 2001/02 to 21.1 percent in 2005/06, before declining to nearly 15 percent in 2007/08. Foreign exchange earnings from exports of leather and leather products increased at an annual average rate of 12.1 percent between 2001 and 2008. Exports of pulses, another traditional export, grew - on average - by 53 percent per annum from 2003/04 to 2007/08. Meat and meat product exports continued to surge as well, exhibiting an annual average growth rate of 79 percent over the same period. 339 Non-traditional exports such as flowers and gold also witnessed substantial growth in the last three years. Flowers became the fourth largest export after coffee, oilseeds, and pulses in 2007/08, accounting for 7.6 percent of total merchandise exports. The value of gold exports also grew at an average annual rate of 13.4 percent over the period 2005/06 – 2007/08 due purely to international gold price increases, since the volume of gold exports has generally been falling, from 6,200 tonnes in 2003/04 to 3,800 tonnes in 2007/08. 340 Ethiopian imports grew at an average annual rate of 30 percent over the past five fiscal years due mainly to the rising price of oil imports. Fuel imports overtook consumer goods to become the second largest import, next to capital goods, in 2007/08, accounting for 23.8 percent of total imports. The substantial growth in imports in 2007/08 was also due to rapid growth in imported raw materials and semi-finished goods – they surged by 73.5 percent and 64.5 percent, respectively. Following a 5 percent contraction in total value in 2007/08, the share of capital goods in total imports dropped considerably from 36.5 percent in 2006/07 to 26.1 percent in 2007/08.   341 The merchandise trade deficit was 21.3 percent of GDP in 2007/08, only slightly higher than in the previous year, and is expected to decline gradually in 2009 and 2010 with the easing of international oil prices. After registering growth of 7.8 percent in 2006/07, net services exports plunged in 2007/08 by 22 percent, mainly due to a considerable increase in the imports of construction services. Thus, the current account deficit widened from 3 percent of GDP in 2006/07, to 4.7 percent in 2007/08 (Table 4).  - 143 -