Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and Palestine Monetary Authority (PMA) announce the  preliminary results of the Palestinian Balance of Payments – Fourth Quarter 2012.

The Deficit in Current Account is USD 658.1 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 2012 are including:

The incessant deficit of the Current Account amounted to USD 658.1 million (24.2 percent of the GDP at current prices for the 4^th quarter of 2012) with a decrease of 2.1 percent 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 1,159.3 million (42.6 percent of the GDP at current prices) with a decrease of 5.9 percent compared to the previous quarter.

The deficit in Services Balance amounted to USD 111.4 million with an increase of 32.4 percent compared to the previous quarter. This increase was caused by the decrease of the exports in travel services in addition to the increase of the imports in transportation services.

The surplus in Income Balance (compensations of employees and investments income) amounted to USD 273.6 million with an a decrease of 2.0 percent compared to the previous quarter, this surplus was due to a surplus in Compensations of Employees working in Israel that reached  USD 236.9 million. While, the received investments income amounted to USD 29.8 million was mainly caused by the interest received on the Palestinian deposits in banks abroad.

According to the Current Transfers, the surplus value amounted to USD 339.1 million with an decrease of 7.0 percent compared to the previous quarter.  The donors’ current transfers was 27.6 percent of total value of receipts from abroad.

The surplus value of Capital and Financial Account amounted to USD 633.9 million was mainly caused by the surplus in Financial Account amounted to USD 568.9 million (Direct Investments, Portfolio Investments, Other Investments, and Reserve Assets).

The changes on Reserve Assets flow (decrease) amounted to USD 1.7 million in PMA.

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