The country's current account turned positive with $ 99 million surplus in October 2019 supported by significant import compression and slight growth in exports.

Current account balance has turned positive after a gap of three-and-a-half years as previously it was $ 157 million surplus in February 2016.

According to State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), during the first quarter of this fiscal year, current account was negative with cumulative $ 1.572 billion deficit, however in October it has turned positive. Pakistan's current account was surplus by $ 99 million in October 2019 compared to $ 284 million deficit in September 2019 and $ 1.28 billion in October 2018, SBP reported on Monday.

The current account in the first four months of this fiscal year (FY20) also showed a massive decline. According to SBP, current account posted a $ 1.474 billion deficit in July-Oct of FY20 compared to $ 5.567 billion in the corresponding period of last fiscal year (FY19), depicting a decline of 74 percent or $ 4.093 billion.

Economists said that the drop in import payments started in the second half of last fiscal year and it's still on the downward side. Import bill is declining due to imposition of regulatory duties on a number of "unnecessary" imports and secondly the completion of CEPC-related energy projects. Collective deficit of goods trade, services and income stood at $ 7.804 billion in the first four months of this fiscal year as against $ 12.43 billion in the same period of last fiscal year. Goods import bills significantly declined from $ 19.016 billion to $ 14.656 billion in the first four months of this fiscal year. With contraction in imports, the country's overall goods trade deficit fell to $ 6.436 billion in July-Oct of FY20 as against $ 11.063 billion in the corresponding period of last fiscal year. During the period under review, deficits of services and income sector were $ 1.368 billion and $ 2.073 billion, respectively.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019