Mauritius faced a significant, 44.8% deterioration in its current account deficit last year, which hit Rs 36.2 billion in 2013 compared to Rs 25 billion in 2012.
It may be noted that the current account deficit largely addresses the difference between exports and imports of goods and services, besides other sources of income such as payments made within the economy by global businesses.
The Balance of Payments of Mauritius, recently published by the central bank according to the provisional results for 2013, clearly shows a sharp dip in current account deficit over the last year.
Balance of Payments is an element of national accounts which lists all commodity, services and financial flows that residents maintain with the rest of the world and are divided into two categories, the current account and the capital account.
The deficit on account of sales and purchases of ‘Goods and Services’, which measures the difference between exports and imports, reached Rs 48.1 billion in 2013 against nearly Rs 45 billion in 2012, thus worsening by 6.9 %.
Exports of goods rose10.6% from Rs 79.6 billion in 2012 to Rs 88.1 billion in 2013, while merchandise imports increased by 2.7% to reach Rs 157.7 billionin 2013 compared to Rs 153.5 billion in 2013. Even the services account worsened, showing a reduced positive balance of Rs 21.5 billion in 2013 against Rs 28.8 billion in 2012.
Income from overseas was estimated at Rs 9.1 billionin 2013 compared to 2012 whenit was in double-digits atRs 15.6 billion while current transfers came down by over a third toRs 2.8 billion in 2013 against Rs 4.3 billion in 2012.
On the capital and financial account, whichcovers high-value transactions for the purchase or sale of non-financial assets, debt waivers as well as capital grants, Mauritius notched up a positive balance of Rs 40.4 billion in 2013.
As current account deficits can be absorbed or funded by the capital account, in the case of Mauritius, the surplus on the ‘capital and financial account’ reduced by the deficit on the ‘current account’ resulted in a net positive balance of Rs 4.3 billion.
Image (Bahrain Association of Banks): The current account deficit largely addresses the difference between exports and imports of goods and services, besides other sources of income such as payments made within the economy by global businesses.
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