The country’s balance of payments posted a surplus of $541 million in November, pushing the total surplus in the first 11 months to $6.27 billion, a turnaround from the $4.75-billion deficit a year ago.
“The 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 and foreign portfolio investments,” the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas said.
The BOP position reflects the final gross international reserves level of $86.23 billion as of end-November 2019. At this level, the GIR represents a more-than-ample liquidity buffer equivalent to 7.5 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.
It is also equivalent to 5.4 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 4.2 times based on residual maturity.
BOP summarizes the country’s economic transactions with the rest of the world. Persistent surpluses help build up the GIR and stabilizes the peso against the US dollar and other foreign currencies.