According to the latest release of the European chief statistical office, Eurostat, the forecast for the third quarter of 2013 suggest that the EU28 is running a current account surplus of 35.6 billion euro, which is about 1.1 percent of its gross domestic product. This is an improvement compared to the same time span in 2012, when the EU27 ran external surplus of about 30.3 billion euro, which was less than a percent of GDP. In fact, the share of 1.1 percent of EU’s GDP is the biggest at least since mid-2012, and almost twice as high as at the beginning of 2013.
In the third quarter of 2013, the deficit of the goods account turned into a surplus of 1.4 billion euro, compared to the 2012 deficit of 6.8 billion euro. In the meantime, the deficit of the current transfers account declined to minus 16.6 billion euro compared to 2012 deficit of 18.5 billion euro. In contrast, the services accounts logged surplus of almost 40 billion euro compared to last year’s 43 billion. The income account reported a surplus as well (11.2 billion euro) compared to the previous period’s 12.6 billion euro.
When it comes down to the currency union, the figures are somewhat different. The eurozone of 17 countries logged current account surplus of 52.6 billion euro in the third quarter of 2013, which represented 2.2 percent of its GDP. This, however, marks a slight decline compared to the end of last year, when the eurozone’s 43.5 billion current account surplus represented about 2.6 percent of its GDP. Moreover, the overall surplus in the third quarter of 2013 consisted of about 40 billion surplus in balance of trade in goods, almost 29 billion in trade with services, nearly 14 percent in balance of income, while the balance of current transfers was negative totaling 31.7 billion euro.
