THE country’s balance of payments’ position in April swung to a deficit of $270 million from a surplus of $917 million a year ago, pulled down mainly by the government’s payments of maturing foreign exchange obligations, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas data on Friday show.
The April deficit was also higher than the $266-million gap in March 2018. The figure brought the BoP position in the first four months to a deficit of $1.497 billion, significantly higher than the $78-million gap in the same period last year.
“Outflows in April stemmed mainly from payments made by the national government for its maturing foreign exchange obligations and foreign exchange operations of the BSP,” the regulator said.
“These were partially offset, however, by income from the BSP’s investments abroad and the net foreign currency deposits of the national government during the month,” BSP said.
Bangko Sentral also said the higher cumulative BoP deficit in the first four months was attributed partly to the widening merchandise trade deficit in the first quarter following the sustained rise in imports to support domestic economic expansion.
It said the BoP position was consistent with the final gross international reserves level of $79.609 billion at the of end of April.
At this level, Bangko Sentral said the GIR represented more than ample liquidity buffer and was equivalent to 7.8 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.
It was also equivalent to 5.4 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 4 times based on residual maturity.
The deficit in the current account, one of the main components of the balance of payments, more than doubled to $2.5 billion in 2017 from the $1.2-billion gap a year ago on the back mainly of the widening trade-in-goods deficit.
Data showed the deficit was the biggest since 1999, when the current account shortfall stood at $2.85 billion.