Balance of payments for Vietnam, the account of all transactions between a country and the rest of the world, hit a surplus of $2.126 billion in the first quarter this year, according to the General Statistics Office of Vietnam. This is up from $126 million deficit it ran the same time last year.
This jump was largely due to the smaller trade deficit the country ran in the same period, said Hai Pham an analyst at ANZ. The office reported a deficit of $176 million for the first four months of the year.
The BoP and trade deficit have helped stabilise the jumpy Vietnamese dong. It also indicates foreign investment inflows are continuing and that the State Bank of Vietnam's foreign reserves also increased in the first quarter, Pham argued.
“We had argued that Vietnam has a structural trade deficit, but the recent slowdown in domestic demand brought down import growth while exports remained healthy. We expect this to continue in the rest of the first half of 2012, and if so, the dong will likely remain relatively stable,” Pham said.
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