During the third quarter this year, Malta registered a current account surplus of €443.3 million, the NSO said today.

Provisional figures for Malta’s external transactions show that during July-September 2017 the current account balance recorded a surplus of €443.3 million as compared to a surplus of €340.1 million in the comparable quarter the previous year. Leading towards this surplus was primarily a positive net balance of the services account of €1,075.9 million marked by improvements in the net balances of the other services, travel and transport accounts. Moreover, the secondary income account recorded a positive net balance of €60.4 million. These were partially outweighed by declines in the goods and primary income accounts of €500.5 million and €192.5 million respectively.

During the third quarter of 2017, the capital account registered a positive net balance of €5.0 million as compared to a positive balance of €0.8 million in 2016.

The financial account was shaped by net asset increases of €100.3 million, a decline in net balance of assets from €538.8 million over the September quarter of 2016. The development in the fi nancial account balance was mainly the result of higher portfolio investment assets and other investment assets by €1,830.8 million and €616.8 million respectively partially outweighed by a decline in net direct investment assets. As a direct effect of the above shifts in the statement, the reserve assets of the country increased by €40.5 million compared to a decrease of €8.5 million during the comparable quarter last year.