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THE
country’s balance of payments (BOP) recovered in July,
helped by remittances of Filipinos abroad and income
receipts from the privatization of government assets,
according to data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
A
surplus of $142 million was recorded last month that
brought the total for the seven-month period to $2.07
billion.
“The BOP
surplus derives from continued strong inflows from
overseas remittances and [foreign exchange] receipts
from privatization of power assets,” BSP Governor Amando
Tetangco Jr. said in a text message to reporters on
Tuesday.
The June
figures compare with the January-to-May surplus of $2.2
billion and the June deficit of $248 million.
The BOP
is a measure of the country’s transactions with the rest
of the world, and reflects foreign- exchange earnings
minus expenses. It is a reliable indicator of where the
economy is going and indicates the strength of the local
currency.
Last
year the country had a record surplus of $8.57 billion,
an all-time high.
Last
month the BSP announced a downward revision of the
full-year BOP surplus to $2.5 billion this year, from
the original target of between $3.3 billion and $3.5
billion.
Total
remittances from about 8 million Filipinos abroad are
expected to rise 10 percent to $15.7 billion from $14.45
billion.
Remittances last month reached $1.5 billion, the highest
monthly inflow recorded since 1989, when the BSP started
to classify foreign- exchange inflows from overseas
workers as a separate category in the central bank’s
foreign -exchange statistical monitoring system.
This
brought total remittances during the first six months to
$8.2 billion, up 17.2 percent from money transferred in
the country a year earlier. |
