Czech banknotes, crowns, bank safe – illustration photo.
Prague – The current account of the balance of payments, which is a summary of all economic transactions of the Czech economy with foreign countries, ended last year with a record deficit of 415.3 billion crowns. This follows from detailed data published by the Czech National Bank (ČNB) on its website today. The year before last, the deficit reached 168 billion crowns, when the current account of the balance of payments recorded a deficit for the first time since 2013. The previous record deficit from 2007 was 177.1 billion crowns.
Advertisement'; }
According to preliminary data from mid-February, the current account of the balance of payments ended last year with a deficit of 380.1 billion crowns. Komerční banka analyst Jaromír Gec said at the time that the result was a noticeable outflow of dividends from foreign direct investments.
For this year, Gec expects a significantly better current account balance of payments result than last year. “After last year's deficit of 5.6 percent of gross domestic product, we expect 3.8 percent (GDP) for this year,” he said. He was reacting to today's preliminary figures for January, when the current account had a surplus of 12.7 billion crowns. According to Gece, this is due to the easing of tensions in supply chains and also to the drop in prices of imported energy commodities.
Today, the CNB also published preliminary data for last year's fourth quarter, in which the current account of the balance of payments ended with a deficit of 83.6 billion crowns. A year earlier, in the same period, the balance sheet showed a deficit of CZK 77.3 billion.
The current account of the balance of payments was in deficit in all quarters last year, from the point of view of the months, it was in surplus only in January. The quarterly deficit was the most pronounced in the third quarter at 227.2 billion crowns. comparing the months, the deficit was the highest in August at the level of CZK 110.9 billion.
In the past, the current account of the balance of payments was in deficit between 1994 and 2013. In 2014, a surplus of CZK 7.9 billion was recorded crowns, in 2020 the surplus reached a record 113.7 billion crowns.
