The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) announced today that the country’s balance of payments (BOP) position registered a deficit of US$2.6 billion in April 2025, significantly higher than the US$639 million deficit posted in the same month last year.
The wider BOP deficit primarily reflected the National Government’s (NG) drawdowns on its foreign currency deposits with the BSP to meet external debt obligations and fund various expenditures, as well as the BSP’s net foreign exchange operations.
This latest development brought the cumulative BOP deficit for the first four months of 2025 to US$5.5 billion, substantially larger than the US$401 million deficit recorded in the same period in 2024. According to preliminary data, the year-to-date deficit was driven mainly by the widening trade deficit in goods. However, the impact was partially offset by continued net inflows from overseas Filipino personal remittances and foreign borrowings by the NG.
As of end-April 2025, the country’s gross international reserves (GIR) stood at US$105.3 billion, slightly down from US$106.7 billion in March 2025. Despite the decline, the GIR level remains a solid external liquidity buffer, sufficient to cover 7.3 months’ worth of imports of goods and payments of services and primary income. It also provides coverage equivalent to 3.7 times the country’s short-term external debt based on residual maturity.
The BSP continues to closely monitor external sector developments and remains committed to maintaining a stable external payments position, consistent with its price and financial stability objectives.
