Japan has posted a record current account surplus for the month of August. The country extended its surplus streak to 19 months in a row, as the weak yen boosted financial gains abroad.
The Finance Ministry announced on Tuesday that the current account surplus topped 3.8 trillion yen, or over 25 billion dollars. That’s an increase of more than 10 billion dollars from the same month last year. It’s the highest figure for August since comparable data became available in 1985.
The current account is a key measure of a country’s earnings from trade and investment with the rest of the world.
The primary income account logged a record monthly surplus of 4.7 trillion yen, or over 31 billion dollars. That’s up more than 6 billion dollars year-on-year.
The primary income account measures the dividends Japanese businesses earn from overseas subsidiaries and returns from bond holdings. The weak yen is said to be behind strong sales of automobiles and other products outside Japan.
Meanwhile, the trade account logged a deficit of about two-and-a-half billion dollars due to growing smartphone and pharmaceutical imports.
The services account was also in the red, with a deficit of more than 700 million dollars. But the figure was smaller than a year earlier due to strong demand from inbound tourism, which ensured a surplus in the travel account. This offset the cost of companies importing foreign-made software to further digitalize their operations.