BoP surplus hits 6-month high
Credit to Author: Mayvelin U. Caraballo, TMT| Date: Thu, 19 Dec 2019 16:58:59 +0000
THE Philippines’ balance of payments (BoP) surplus rose to a six-month high of $541 million in November, boosting the year-to-date tally above the central bank’s upwardly revised target for the year.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Thursday that the amount was higher than the $163-million surplus in October, but lower than the $847 million recorded a year ago.
It was also the largest since May, when the payments position stood at a surplus of $928 million, and boosted the January-to-November tally to $6.27 billion, reversing the $4.74-billion shortfall a year earlier.
The 11-month tally already surpassed the Bangko Sentral’s upwardly revised forecast of a $4.8-billion surplus for this year.
“Inflows in November 2019 reflected the BSP’s foreign exchange operations, increase in the National Government’s (NG) net foreign currency deposits and BSP’s income from its investments abroad,” the central bank said in a statement.
These were offset by “outflows representing payments made by the NG on its foreign exchange obligations during the month in review,” it added.
The January-to-November surplus “may be attributed partly to lower trade in goods account deficit, higher net receipts in the trade in services account and personal remittance inflows from overseas Filipinos, and net inflows of foreign direct investments (FDI) and foreign portfolio investments,” the BSP said.
Personal remittances reached $27.61 billion in January to October, up 4.3 percent from $26.47 billion a year earlier.
Meanwhile, net FDI reached $5.11 billion in the first nine months, 36.9 percent down from the amount in January to September 2018.
Foreign investment portfolios, on the other hand, registered a net outflow of $1.57 billion in the first 11 months.
The BoP ended at a deficit of $2.306 billion last year, wider than the $863 million recorded in 2017, but lower than the BSP’s $5.5-billion forecast.