THE country’s overall balance of payments (BOP) has posted a surplus of $1.3 billion in March 2023, higher than the $754-million surplus recorded in the same month last year, data from the central bank showed on Wednesday.
Data showed the BOP surplus in March 2023 reflected inflows arising mainly from the national government’s (NG) net foreign currency loans, which were deposited with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), and net income from the BSP’s investments abroad.
The BSP said the surplus in March brought the current year-to-date BOP level to $3.5-billion surplus, markedly higher than the $495-million surplus recorded in the same period a year ago.
“The cumulative BOP surplus reflected inflows that stemmed mainly from personal remittances, net foreign borrowings by the NG, and foreign direct investments,” the BSP reported.
Moreover, the BSP data also showed the gross international reserves (GIR) level has increased to $101.5 billion as of end-March 2023 from $98.2 billion as of end-February 2023.
“The latest GIR level represents a more-than-adequate external liquidity buffer equivalent to 7.6 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income,” the central bank said.
“Moreover, it is also about 6.1 times the country’s short-term external debt based on original maturity and 4.2 times based on residual maturity,” it added.
For his part, Michael Ricafort, chief economist of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. said that “the latest BOP and GIR data could have also been supported by the continued growth in the country’s structural dollar inflows such as OFW [overseas Filipino worker] remittances, BPO [business process outsourcing] revenues, exports, foreign investments, foreign tourism revenues [more than $3.68 billion and with more than 2.65 million foreign tourists for 2022, especially since the reopening of the country to foreign tourists in February 2022], POGO revenues, among others.”
Ricafort added: “For the coming months, BOP data could still improve with the continued increase/growth in the country’s structural inflows as the economy reopens further towards greater normalcy, in terms of the continued year-on-year growth in OFW remittances [came from new record highs on a monthly basis in December 2022, at least $36 billion per year],” he added.
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