The country’s transactions with the rest of the world proved to be resilient in the face of major global developments that caused volatility in international financial markets in the first half of the year.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) reported on Monday that the country’s balance of payments (BOP) hit a surplus of $1.68 billion in the first half of the year.
The country’s BOP in the first se-mester is a significant turnaround from the $4.144-billion deficit seen in the same six-month period last year. The BOP surplus in June hit $485 million, the second-largest monthly surplus for the year.
This was a reversal of the deficit seen in May this year, at $58 milion.
It was also a reversal of the $24-million deficit seen in June 2014.
BSP Gov. Amando M. Tetangco Jr. told reporters that the BOP surplus was largely driven by
national government-loan proceeds deposited to the BSP, as well as the foreign-exchange operations of the central bank.
BSP Deputy Governor for the Monetary Stability Sector Diwa C. Guinigundo said the BOP surplus was derived from the continued favorable outturn in both cash remittances and business-process outsourcing (BPO) revenues.
“These two structural flows have supported the current-account surplus since 2003. Tourist receipts and other services income also contributed to both the current-account and overall BOP surpluses for the first several months of 2015,”
Guinigundo said.
Although Guinigundo admited that the BOP surplus will be challenged by “market volatilities on account of the US Federal Reserve tightening and the fallout from Greece’s continuing difficult saga of survival and stabilization, and China’s stock-market crash and weak economic growth,” he expressed positive sentiment on the BOP turnout for the rest of the year. “We are confident our BOP target of $2 billion will be achieved by end-December 2015,” Guinigundo said.