Current account surplus down 28.7% in Feb.

April 9, 2018

Tokyo- Japan's current account surplus in February fell 28.7 percent from a year earlier to 2,076 billion yen, due to a plunge in the goods trade surplus partly reflecting higher crude oil prices, the Finance Ministry said Monday.

The country's current account balance was in the black for the 44th straight month. The February figure fell short of a median forecast of 2,175 billion yen in surplus in a Jiji Press survey of 20 economic research institutes.

The trade surplus tumbled 82.5 percent to 188.7 billion yen. Imports jumped 17.8 percent to 6,234.8 billion yen on the back of rises in the prices of crude oil and other natural resources.

Imports soared 36.1 percent for petroleum products and 18.8 percent for liquefied natural gas. By region, imports from Asia went up 26.5 percent.

Meanwhile, exports grew a tepid 0.9 percent to 6,423.5 billion yen. Shipments to Asia, such as automobile exports to China, were sluggish because this year's Lunar New Year holidays in the regions were fully included in the reporting month. Last year, the holiday period started in late January.

Japan's services trade surplus leaped some 20-fold to 122.7 billion yen as the travel account surplus surged 81.8 percent to 178.3 billion yen. In February, the number of foreign visitors to Japan hit the highest level for the month while that of Japanese who traveled abroad decreased.

The surplus on the primary income account, including investment returns from abroad, shrank 2.7 percent to 1,948.1 billion yen. Jiji Press