Overseas exchange transactions

Press, 2 September 1986, Page 17

Overseas exchange transactions

PA Wellington The Reserve Bank has published for the last time statistics for overseas exchange transactions. It reported that transactions for June recorded a current account deficit of $246 million, compared with a deficit of $B9 million in June, 1985. For the year to June the deficit rose to $2,039 million from $1,882 million recorded in the year to May. Official overseas reserves increased $322 million in June and stood at $2,882 million at the end of the month. The official overseas debt increased $446 million over the June quarter to $16,076 million. Announcing last week that it would be the last occasion that the Reserve

Bank would be publishing GET statistics, it said: “It has been emphasised over the last 12 months that the OET statistics as a cash flow record are only broadly indicative of trends in the external accounts and that a more comprehensive measure of developments in the external sector is given by the Department of Statistics’ balance of payments series. “As a result of the deterioration in the quality of the OET statistics, the Department of Statistics has undertaken a review of its external economic statistics and, as part of this programme, will assume responsibility for collecting and processing OET data which will in future be used to produce monthly estimates of the balance of payments.”