Azerbaijan's current account surplus halves in first quarter of 2024

Head of the Statistics Department of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA) Samir Nasirov has said that Azerbaijan's current account surplus for the first quarter of 2024 totalled $1.7 billion.

The indicator decreased by 48.8 per cent compared to the same period last year (January-March 2023 - a surplus of $3.4 billion), Caliber.Az reports, citing the CBA report on the balance of payments for January to March 2024.

The head of the department said that the surplus was formed under the influence of various trends.

“There was a surplus of $1.7 billion in the current account balance, and a deficit of $1.6 billion in the capital and financial balance sheet (mainly due to a reduction in financial liabilities). In the context of a balance of payments surplus, the country’s strategic foreign exchange assets increased by $116 million,” Nasirov noted.

During this period, the average price of crude oil was $88 per barrel.

At the same time, the surplus in the oil and gas sector totalled $3.6 billion (down 28.2%), while the deficit in the non-oil and gas sector was $1.9 billion (up 12.8%).

According to the report, the foreign trade surplus totalled $2.7 billion, which is 43.5 per cent less than in the same period last year.

"Regarding the surplus on foreign trade balance, there is a surplus of foreign trade operations, i.e. the volume of exports for the reporting period amounted to 6.2 billion US dollars, imports - $3.5 billion," Nasirov stressed.

He also noted that in the balance of payments structure, the services balance deficit was $552.1 million (down 19.6 per cent according to the report), the primary income balance deficit was $566.4 million (down 40.7 per cent) and the recurrent income balance surplus was $178.9 million (down 40 per cent).

The head of the department noted that the main component of the balance of recurrent income is remittances, the volume of which decreased during the reporting period due to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian military conflict.

"If we pay attention to the data before the conflict, i.e. 2022-2023, we will notice an increase compared to remittances in the first quarter of 2021," Nasirov emphasised.