Czechia Import Trade Data: $228.91B in 2023, Down 3.1%

Electrical Machinery Leads a Component-Heavy Import Bill

Czechia imported $228.91 billion worth of goods in 2023. That was down 3.1% from $236.32 billion the year before, the first annual pullback since the pandemic low. Electrical machinery led every import category, worth $52.33 billion, or 22.9% of total import value. Machinery and mechanical appliances followed at 14.8% ($33.93 billion), and vehicles added a further 10.2% ($23.45 billion). Together, those three categories made up nearly half of everything Czechia bought from abroad in 2023, mirroring the same industries that dominate the export side. Foxconn runs two of its most important European manufacturing sites in Pardubice and Kutná Hora, assembling servers, routers, and other electronics for the whole region. The company employs roughly 4,500 people at those two plants and ranks as one of Czechia's largest exporters in its own right. None of that output is possible without a steady inbound stream of chips, circuit boards, and other components, which is exactly the kind of goods that dominate this list. Those products depend on imported components before the finished goods ship back out again.

Mineral fuels ranked fourth at 6.1% ($13.96 billion), a far larger share than mineral fuels held among Czechia's own exports. Czechia has no oil or gas reserves of its own, so nearly all of its energy needs arrive as imports. Czechia has eliminated its dependence on Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine, rerouting crude through pipeline capacity that no longer touches Russian supply. Plastics added 4.8% ($10.96 billion), and iron and steel contributed 3.4% ($7.73 billion). Pharmaceutical products took 3.2% ($7.44 billion), iron or steel articles 2.5% ($5.61 billion), optical and medical instruments 2.4% ($5.47 billion), and furniture and lighting closed out the top ten at 1.9% ($4.31 billion). Iron and steel appearing twice in the top ten, as both raw material and finished articles, points to a manufacturing base that still needs plenty of metal input even after decades of shifting toward electronics and machinery assembly.

China Rivals Germany as a Top Supplier

Germany supplied 20.9% of Czech imports in 2023, worth $47.92 billion, the largest single share. China followed closely at 17.6% ($40.29 billion), a gap of only a few percentage points between the two. That closeness is notable. Germany's position reflects the same deep manufacturing integration that shows up on the export side. China's reflects a different pattern: electronics components, machinery parts, and consumer goods flowing into Czechia's assembly-oriented industries and retail market alike. Electronics manufacturers based in Czechia, Foxconn among them, sit at the downstream end of supply chains that still run heavily through Chinese component suppliers, even as many Western firms talk about diversifying away from that dependence. Poland ranked third at 8.0% ($18.40 billion). Together, Germany, China, and Poland accounted for 46.6% of total import value.

Slovakia followed at 4.4% ($10.09 billion), and Italy added 3.9% ($9.03 billion). France supplied 2.9% ($6.72 billion), and United States followed at 2.8% ($6.44 billion). Hungary took 2.7% ($6.08 billion), Austria 2.6% ($5.96 billion), and Netherlands closed out the top ten at 2.6% ($5.90 billion). Outside of Germany and China, no single supplier holds much more than an eighth of the market. That is a noticeably more even spread than the concentrated pattern seen on Czechia's export side, where Germany alone absorbs close to a third of everything the country sells. No single import supplier comes close to that kind of individual dominance, even though Germany and China together still account for well over a third of the total.

Imports Cooled in 2023 After Three Years of Growth

Czechia's imports climbed for three straight years before easing in 2023. The total stood at $179.27 billion in 2019. It fell to $171.44 billion in 2020, as the pandemic curbed demand, then jumped to $212.48 billion in 2021 and $236.32 billion in 2022. Imports then slipped to $228.91 billion in 2023, a 3.1% decline. That marks the first pullback in the five-year window, even as the total remains well above pre-pandemic levels.

That dip runs opposite to what happened on the export side over the same year, where Czech exports kept climbing even as imports cooled. A shrinking import bill alongside growing exports typically signals an improving trade position. The two directions move for different reasons, though, governed by separate demand cycles rather than a single shared cause. For a closer look at how individual partner countries or product categories moved year over year, the data panels above provide the full detail behind these figures.