The country’s balance of payments (BoP) surplus for the first 10 months surged to $4.173 billion in October, or about $896 million more than what was reported in September.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said for the month of October alone, the BoP excess increased by $394 million. It was also in October that the central bank readjusted its BoP forecast higher to $5 billion surplus for 2009 and $4 billion next year.

The BoP was boosted mainly by the National Government's additional $1- billion foreign exchange from the sale of global bonds, also in October.
BoP summarizes the country’s economic transactions with the rest of the world and is determined by such indicators as exports/imports, foreign direct investments, foreign portfolio investments or hot money and remittances.

As of Saturday, the updated gross international reserves (GIR) as monitored by the BSP was $43.18 billion in the first 10 months, a little lower than its November 6 report of $43.2 billion. Including unofficial dollar reserves in foreign exchange swap positions, the dollar stock actually totals $51.55 billion.

One of the major BoP contributor was remittances, which the BSP expects will amount to $17.1 billion or four percent more compared to 2008 and for 2010, foreign exchange fund transfers will grow by six percent to $18.1 billion.

BSP also raised its expectations for foreign direct investments to $1.5 billion for this year and $1.7 billion for 2010.

The BSP reported a small BoP surplus of $89 million last year despite a $1.5 billion deficit in the last quarter of that year.