عربي
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) announce the preliminary results of the Palestinian Balance of Payments – Fourth Quarter 2013.
The Deficit in Current Account is USD 365.3 Million .
The Balance of Payments (BOP) is an account measuring transactions between residents and non-residents in a given period. It is considered to be the peak of efforts in preparing systematic economic statistics that are necessary for observing economic performance in general and for deriving essential data used in compiling the Rest of the World Account as part of the Palestinian National Accounts. BoP consists of two main accounts, the Current Account and the Capital and Financial Account.
The main findings of the preliminary results of BoP for the fourth quarter of 2013 are including:
The incessant deficit of the Current Account amounted to USD 365.3 million (9.8 percent of the GDP at current prices for the 4th quarter of 2013) with an increase of 44.6% compared to the previous quarter. The deficit of Current Account was caused mainly by the deficit in the Trade Balance of goods which was USD 1,125.7 million (30.2% of the GDP at current prices) with a decrease of 4.2% compared to the previous quarter.
The deficit in Services Balance amounted to USD 139.1 million with an increase of 44.0% compared to previous quarter. This increase was caused by the increase of the imports of travel and government services.
The surplus in Income Balance (compensations of employees and investments income) amounted to USD 361.4 million with an increase of 6.0% compared to the previous quarter, this surplus was due to a surplus in Compensations of Employees working in Israel that reached USD 327.9 million. While, the received investments income amounted to USD 36.8 million was mainly caused by the interest received on the Palestinian deposits in banks abroad.
According to the Current Transfers in the fourth quarter of 2013, the surplus value amounted to USD 538.1 million with a decrease of 20.6% compared to the previous quarter. The donors’ current transfers was 47.7% of total value of receipts from abroad.
The surplus value of Capital and Financial Account amounted to USD 479.5 million was mainly caused by the surplus in Financial Account (direct investment, portfolio investments, other investments and reserve assets) amounted to USD 392.5.
The changes on Reserve Assets flow (increased) amounted to USD 50.7 million at PMA. Which reflects the overall balance.