Malta registers €339 million current account surplus

Provisional figures for Malta’s external transactions collected by the National Statistics Office (NSO) show that during period between July and September 2016 the current account balance recorded a surplus of €339.1 million.

In the comparable quarter last year, a surplus of €120 million was registered.

The main reason for this year’s surplus, according to the NSO, was primarily a positive net balance of the services account of €944 million marked by improvements in the net balances of the other services, travel and transport accounts. Moreover, the secondary income account recorded a positive net balance of €62.9 million. These were partially outweighed by declines in the goods and primary income accounts of €503.5 million and €164.3 million respectively.

During the third quarter of 2016, the capital account registered a positive net balance of €0.8 million as compared to a positive balance of €2.2 million last year, the NSO said.

The financial account was shaped by net asset increases of €539.6 million as opposed to a negative net balance of assets of €567.6 million during the same quarter of 2015. The improvement in the financial account balance was mainly the result of higher other investment net assets partially outweighed by a decline in net direct investment assets, the NOS said. Moreover, net portfolio investment registered an increase of €342 million. As a direct effect of the above shifts in the statement, the reserve assets of the country decreased by €8.5 million compared to an increase of €9.4 million during the September quarter last year.