Current account deficit amounts to $892 million in July

The country registered 892 million-dollar current account deficit during July, the first month of the current fiscal year. Official statistics revealed on Saturday the country''s current account deficit had dipped by 17 percent or 181 million dollars to 892 million dollars during July as compared 1.073 billion dollars deficit during July 2006.
"Increase in current account deficit has been contributed to trade, services and income deficit, besides huge payments of interest and dividends during July," analysts said.
They said the government had failed to control the rising import and meet the targeted export growth. Statistics indicated that principal factors responsible for the widening of current account deficit included a widening trade deficit by 1.002 billion dollars, services deficit by 536 million dollars and tremendous rise of 251 million dollars in income deficit.
While the overall deficit, including trade, services and income stood at 1.789 billion dollars against the current account transfers of 905 million dollars during the last month.
During July, the country''s altogether income from abroad stood at 57 million dollars as compared to 308 million-dollar payments of income to the overseas. In addition, service''s sector payments reached 755 million dollars against the receipts of 219 million dollars in service account.
The statistics depicted the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) reserves, which, at present, stood at 13.308 billion dollars as compared to 10.453 billion dollars in July 2006. The statistics showed the current account deficit, without official transfers, climbed to 917 million dollars during the last month as compared to 1.077 billion dollars during July 2006, depicting a decline of 160 million dollars during the last month.
For the first time in the country''s history, the current account deficit reached 4.8 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) against the target of 4.3 percent for 2007. The current account basically showed the overall position of the country''s inflow and outflow payments.