The State Bank of Pakistan on Tuesday said that the country's current account deficit had surged by 694 million dollars in the second quarter, relative to first quarter of fiscal year 2010. The country has faced a deficit of 1.226 billion dollars in October-December, which is about 130 percent higher than the current account deficit of 532 million dollars of the first three months (July-Sep) of fiscal year 2010.
Current account deficit in December 2009 was 38 percent higher than November 2009, as the country registered a deficit of 391 million dollars in December 2009 against 283 million dollars in November, depicting an increase of 108 million dollars.
Although month on month and quarterly basis current account deficit is on the rise, yet cumulative balance of payments presented significant improvement during first half of current fiscal year. Overall current account deficit registered a decline of 78 percent in the first half of current fiscal year, when compared with same period of 2008-09.
With current decrease, the country's overall current account deficit narrowed down to 1.758 billion dollars in the first half of current fiscal year relative to a deficit of 7.846 billion dollars in the same period of last fiscal year, depicting a decreased of 6.088 billion dollars.
Overall deficit, including trade, services and income, stood at 7.011 billion dollars over the current account transfers of 5.167 billion dollars in July-December of fiscal year 2010. Overall goods imports stood at 15 billion dollars and exports at 9.3 billion dollars, registering a trade deficit of 5.714 billion dollars during first half of current fiscal year, which previously stood at 8.21 billion dollars during same period of last fiscal year 2009.
Services sector has also presented a significant improvement and services sector deficit stood at 1.532 billion dollars with 1.88 billion dollars exports and 3.41 billion dollars imports in July-December of current fiscal year. Similarly, income deficit also declined to 1.47 billion dollars in first six months of fiscal year 2010, as altogether income from abroad stood at 243 million dollars as compared to payments of 1.71 billion dollars.
Statistics show current account deficit without official transfers has crossed two billion dollars mark during the first half of fiscal year 2010 as compared to 7.93 billion dollars in the same period of fiscal year 2009.