Brasília – For the third consecutive month, Brazil has registered a current account surplus. In May, the current account surplus, which includes purchases and sales of goods and services and the country’s current transfers, was USD 2.884 billion, reported this Tuesday (27) the Brazilian Central Bank (BC). This was the best result for the month in the historical series started in 1995.
May’s results also is the besto ne since July 2006, when it reached USD 3.007 billion. In the first five months of the year, there’s a deficit of USD 616 million, lower than the one registered in the same period of 2016 (USD 5.998 billion).
The current account surplus was impacted by the trade balance. In May, there was a trade surplus of USD 7.419 billion and it’s now at USD 27.973 billion in the first five months of the year. For the year, BC revised up the forecast for the trade balance surplus from USD 51 billion to USD 54 billion. This was the main fator that drove the bank to revise its forecast for the current account deficit from USD 30 billion to USD 24 billion.
Regarding the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the deficit should account to 1.19% of it, against BC’s forecast made in March that pointed to 1.45%.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani