July current account deficit amounts to $635 million

The country registered current account deficit $635 million during July 2010, the first month of the current fiscal year. The State Bank of Pakistan on Tuesday said that the country's current account deficit had dipped by 1.5 percent or $10 million, to $635 million, during July 2010 as compared to $645 million during July 2009.
However, this figure was higher by 44 percent than $441 million recorded in June 2010. July 2010 current account deficit without official transfers was also higher than the same period of last fiscal year. Without official transfers, current account deficit had climbed to $765 million during July 2010 as compared $648 million in July 2009, depicting an increase of 18 percent or $117 million during July 2010.
With a deficit of $222 million, the country's altogether income from abroad in July 2010 stood at $57 million as compared to $279 million payments of income to the overseas. Services sector exports presented a healthy and better performance as the services imports declined, while exports posted some rise. Services exports reached $282 million in first month of current fiscal year as compared to export of $249 million in corresponding period of last fiscal year, depicting an increase of $33 million in July 2010. In addition, services imports declined to $556 million in July 2010 from $566 million in July 2009.
With $1.645 billion exports and $2.914 billion imports, goods trade deficit stood at $1.269 billion in the first month of current fiscal year. "Some decline in current account deficit has been contributed by increase in goods and services exports, besides huge payments home remittances during July," analysts said.
However, they said that month on month basis current account deficit posted some increase, which is a matter of concern and policy makers should take some steps to control it. It may be mentioned here that during fiscal year 2009-10, the country had posted current account deficit of $3.495 billion as compared to $9.261 billion in fiscal year 2008-09.