TOKYO—Japan recorded its largest current account deficit since the start of 2014 in January as a jump in oil import costs offset gains in investment income, with continuing uncertainty due to the Ukraine crisis and COVID-19 pandemic. The current account data highlighted the dependence of Japan’s resource-deficient economy on imports of commodities and raw materials, which caused the trade deficit to widen. Japan, the world’s third-largest economy, posted a current account deficit of 1.1887 trillion yen ($10.31 billion) in January, the data showed, versus economists’ median estimate of an 880 billion yen deficit in a Reuters poll. It was the second straight month of deficit and marked the second largest deficit under comparable data going back to 1985. Surging fuel costs drove up the value of imports by 39.9 percent in January from a year earlier, outpacing a 15.2 percent rise in exports. In addition, Japan’s trade deficit with China …
Japan Logs Biggest Current Account Deficit Since 2014 as Oil Import Costs Surge
March 8, 2022
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