Balance of payments data has once again been heavily revised

Data on the balance of payments published yesterday by the Bank of Russia have once again been greatly revised – exports in October turned out to be $4.2 billion lower than the first estimate of $33 billion, which “is associated with lower physical volumes of exports for certain goods according to actual data from customs statistics compared with preliminary estimates based on extrapolation of the values ​​of previous months,” the Central Bank explains. Estimates for imports (by $0.6 billion) and income (by $1.3 billion) were also reduced. As a result, the trade balance turned out to be $4.9 billion lower than the previous estimate ($9.4 billion), the current account balance shrank from $11.2 billion to $4.9 billion, which, accordingly, reduced the “capital outflow” – the increase in external assets was not $5.2 billion, but $0.5 billion, and repayment of external obligations decreased from $5 billion to $3.5 billion. “The data is strange, considering that the main trading partner – China – did not demonstrate anything similar, but theoretically this can be attributed to ban on the export of petroleum products in October,” says Yegor Susin from Gazprombank.

In November, the estimated surplus in goods trade was $8.4 billion, the current account surplus was $4.3 billion due to a slight increase in imports and a decrease in exports (see chart). However, “taking into account the revisions, it is worth treating the preliminary data accordingly,” notes Mr. Susin. Analysts of the Telegram channel “Hard Figures” agree with him. Meanwhile, having eliminated seasonality from the foreign trade data series, they conclude that the local peak of trade surpluses was passed in September 2023 due to the Urals price of $81/barrel; in early December it dropped below $60/barrel. The dynamics of imports do not yet indicate a significant cooling in economic activity – it remained at the level of $23 billion per month in October-November versus about $25.5 billion in the summer. “From the beginning of 2024, the impact of export dynamics on the exchange rate will decrease – regular operations (sales of foreign currency when Urals are below 60 $/barrel and purchases in the opposite case) within the framework of the budget rule will compensate for deviations in oil and gas revenues, and “irregular” operations will support the ruble” , say the authors of the calculations (according to them, the balance of transactions with funds of the National Welfare Fund will cause sales of foreign currency in the amount of about 0.24 trillion rubles per month in the first half of 2024).

Artem Chugunov