The current account deficit of the balance of payments of Moldova in the first nine months of last year continued to grow. But the components of the current account had a non-uniform development, the dynamics in the third quarter of the year being different from those in the previous quarters, IPN reports.
According to the National Bank of Moldova, even if the balance of foreign trade in goods in January – September 2019 as usual made a negative contribution to the current account, it improved in the third quarter of the year owing to the more accelerated rise in exports of goods compared with imports. Despite the unfavorable evolution of prices of exported goods (-5.1%, -4.3% and -5.1% in first three quarters of 2019), exports rose in value owing to the increase in volumes (+13.8%, +3.1% and +8.7%).
From geographical viewpoint, exports of goods to the traditional markets – the EU and the CIS – diminished compared with January – September 2018 (-3.7% and -1.6%), but to other markets rose considerably (+49.1%).
The balance of foreign trade in services, unlike that in goods, developed negatively in the third quarter of 2019, even if the dynamics were positive in the first two quarters. The trend reverted also for primary revenues whose surplus declined in the third quarter of last year due to the substantial rise in revenues from direct investments in the form of dividends paid to nonresidents, even if the positive balance of primary revenues in the first half of 2019 was on the rise.
The balance of the current account continued to worsen, but the factors that generated such a situation in the third quarter of last year were different from the usual ones. The balance of foreign trade in goods usually makes the main negative contribution to the evolution of the current account, but in the third quarter of 2019 its impact was positive and the deterioration of the current account had another two main sources – significant rise in dividends paid to direct foreign investors and the negative evolution of the balance of trade in services.
