The current account surplus was equivalent to 0.2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) last year. The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said the country’s current account surplus last year narrowed 91.7 percent from full-year 2015 “due primarily to the widening deficit in the trade-in-goods account.”Analysts predict a further slowdown in the current account this year on expectations of higher import demand from a growing economy and oil price increases. In the last quarter of 2016 alone, current account registered a deficit of $1 billion or 1.2 percent of GDP, a reversal of the $1.4 billion surplus posted a year earlier. With the lower current account surplus for full-year 2016, the country’s full-year payments balance swung to a $420 million deficit in 2016 from a $2.6 billion surplus in 2015. By 2018, the current account deficit is likely to widen to 1 percent of GDP, the bank added.

Source: Manila Times March 17, 2017 17:15 UTC