The SAFE recently released the preliminary data on China's Balance of Payments Statement for the second quarter and the first half of 2010.
The current account and the capital and financial account posted a "twin surplus" in Q2 of 2010, and international reserves maintained their growing momentum. During the same period, the surplus under the current account totaled USD70.5 billion, an increase of 30 percent year on year. Specifically, according to the statistical coverage of the balance of payments, the surpluses in goods, income, and current transfers reached USD59.5 billion, USD7.2 billion, and USD9.9 billion, respectively, whereas the deficit in the services trade amounted to USD6.1 billion. Meanwhile, during this year China's surplus under the capital and financial account (including net errors and omissions) totaled USD11.5 billion. Specifically, the net inflows of foreign exchange by foreign direct investments amounted to USD21 billion. International reserves assets posted an increase of USD82.1 billion, a drop of 17 percent year on year calculated on a comparable basis. Specifically, foreign exchange reserve assets registered an increase of USD81.1 billion (exclusive of the influence of non-transaction value change factors, such as exchange rates, prices, etc.), and the reserve position in the IMF registered an increase of USD900 million.
In the first half of 2010, China's surplus under the current account totaled USD124.2 billion, a decrease of 8 percent year on year. The share of the surplus under the current account in GDP was 4.9 percent, a decrease of 1.3 percentage points as compared with the same period of the last year. Meanwhile, China's surplus under the capital and financial account this year totaled USD 53.9 billion (including net errors and omissions). International reserve assets posted an increase of USD178 billion, a rise of 8 percent year on year.
Balance of Payments1 (Preliminary Data)
Q2 and H1, 2010
Unit: USD 100 million
Items | # | Q2, 20102 | H1, 20103 |
I. Current Account | 1 | 705 | 1,242 |
A. Goods and Services | 2 | 534 | 764 |
a. Goods | 3 | 595 | 897 |
Credit | 4 | 3896 | 7,063 |
Debit | 5 | 3302 | 6,166 |
b. Services | 6 | -61 | -133 |
B. Income | 7 | 72 | 283 |
C. Current Transfers | 8 | 99 | 194 |
II. Capital and Financial Account4 | 9 | 115 | 539 |
Incl.: Direct investment | 10 | 210 | 365 |
III. Reserves Assets | 11 | -821 | -1,780 |
3.1 Monetary Gold | 12 | 0 | 0 |
3.2 Special Drawing Rights | 13 | 0 | -1 |
3.3 Reserves Position in the Fund | 14 | -9 | -9 |
3.4 Foreign Exchange | 15 | -811 | -1,770 |
3.5 Other Claims | 16 | 0 | 0 |
Notes:
1. This statement employs rounded-off numbers. Some aggregate data may be not equal to the accumulation of the correspondent subentries.
2. The preliminary data of the BOP statement for Q2 of 2010 is prepared based on the single quarter.
3. The preliminary data of this statement for H1 of 2010 is the sum total of the revised data for Q1 of 2010 and the preliminary data for Q2 of 2010.
4. The data under the capital and financial accounts in this statement is the balance between Current Account Balance and the amount of change in reserve assets, including net errors and omissions.
