Jan.-Sept. payments surplus widens to $6.54B

The Philippines gained more foreign exchange in the first nine months of the year that the balance of payments (BOP) surplus widened to $6.54 billion.

In September, the payments surplus of $3.062 billion was a record, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Gov. Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said in a text message to reporters Tuesday.

“This was a record high monthly BOP surplus since the BSP shifted to the new BOP compilation methodology in 1999,” Tetangco said.

The September surplus was more than four times the $611 million recorded in a year earlier.

The nine-month payments surplus of $6.54 billion was $119 million more than the $6.42 billion recorded in the same 2009 period, Tetangco added.

The central bank’s foreign exchange operations, proceeds from the national government’s bond issuance as well as proceeds from overseas development assistance loans, helped boost the country’s BOP position, Tetangco said.

The BOP measures a country’s transactions with the rest of the world and shows the sum or difference between the amounts of foreign exchange that went in and out of the country in a particular period.

In August, Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima sold $1 billion worth of peso-denominated global bonds.

The local and foreign banks that helped the Department of Finance raise money overseas asked Purisima to raise the offering that was oversubscribed, but he declined.

Instead, the Finance Department went for a $1.5-billion bond-swap-for-new-money sale in September.

While the Philippines was able to sell around $500 million worth of bonds as new money component to that transaction, it was able to exchange outstanding but more expensive bonds with newer and less expensive debts totaling $1 billion.

Tetangco also said the payments surplus reflected the global shift in capital flows toward emerging markets like the Philippines.

Monetary authorities also noted that the money transferred by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to relatives in the Philippines continue to support the country’s payments position.

Remittances largely from OFWs grew by 7.4 percent to $12.181 billion in the first eight months of the year, latest central bank data showed. — DM/VS, GMANews.TV