The current account deficit amounted to USD 125 million in June. The trade in goods deficit somewhat narrowed (to USD 0.8 billion) compared with May due to the major slowdown of the growth in imports of goods compared with the exports. Meanwhile, the balance of trade in services decreased.
In H1 2018, the current account deficit widened to USD 613 million (from USD 285 million in H1 2017).
Exports of goods increased by 11.5% yoy and accounted to USD 3.4 billion. The main contribution to the growth in exports was the delivery of metal products, the growth of which accelerated (up to 32.5% yoy).
Due to the early harvest, grain exports increased and the growth in food exports (meat, in particular) accelerated. At the same time, the total growth in exports of goods slowed down due to the slowed growth in machinery and chemical exports.
In January–June 2018, the exports of goods grew by 11.7% compared with the same period a year ago (to USD 21.2 billion).
In June, the imports of goods accounted to USD 4.3 billion, but their growth slowed down greatly (to 9.9% yoy) mainly due to the slowed growth in machinery and chemical exports. Meanwhile, due to the increase in global oil and natural gas prices, the growth of the energy imports’ value remained high (32.7%).
In total, the imports of goods grew by 14% yoy in January–June 2018 to reach USD 25.5 billion.
Net financial account inflows amounted to USD 148 million in June 2018 (compared with USD 282 million in June 2017) and were generated by net FDI inflows. The net FDI inflows grew up to USD 462 million in June, whereas 67% of them were the operations of conversion of debt into authorized capital. In January–June 2018, the net FDI inflows reached USD 1.2 billion.
A decrease in cash outside banks accounted to USD 61 million in June.
Net external liabilities of the public sector edged slightly lower by USD 12 million mainly due to the redemption of hryvnia domestic government bonds owned by non-residents.
In January–June 2018, the net total inflows of funds on the financial account amounted to USD 922 million.
In June, the balance of payments recorded a surplus of USD 23 million. At the same time, due to payments to the IMF, international reserves decreased to USD 18.0 billion as of 1 July 2018, covering 3.1 months of future imports.
The updated data for June 2018 can be found under the External Sector Statistics section.
For more details on the balance of payments, see the Macroeconomic and Monetary Review (July 2018), published on 31 July 2018.