MANILA, March 19 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' overall balance of payments (BOP) position yielded a surplus of 467 million U.S. dollars in February 2019, a reversal of the 429 million U.S. dollars BOP deficit recorded in the same month last year, the Philippine central bank said on Tuesday.
The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said inflows in February 2019 stemmed mainly from the BSP's foreign exchange operations, national government's (NG) net foreign currency deposits, and BSP's income from its investments abroad.
These were partially offset, however, by the payments made by the NG for its foreign exchange obligations during the month in review, the BSP said.
On a cumulative basis, the BSP said the BOP position for the period January -February 2019 posted a surplus of 3.17 billion U.S. dollars, a turnaround from the 961 million U.S. dollars BOP deficit recorded in the first two months of 2018.
"The surplus may be attributed partly to remittance inflows from overseas Filipinos in January 2019 and net inflows of foreign portfolio investments (net BSP- registered transactions based on custodian banks' reports) for the first two months of the year, which was a reversal of the net outflows reported in January -February 2018," the BSP said.
The reported BOP position reflected the final gross international reserves (GIR) level of 82.78 billion U.S. dollars as of end-February 2019.
At this level, the BSP said the GIR represents a more than ample liquidity buffer and is equivalent to 7.3 months' worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income.
It is also equivalent to 5.2 times the country's short-term external debt based on original maturity and 3.6 times based on residual maturity, the BSP said.
