WASHINGTON – The nation’s current-account deficit narrowed to $195.8 billion in the fourth quarter as oil prices fell, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said today.
That’s a decline of 14.6 percent from the third-quarter shortfall of $229.4 billion in the current-account balance, considered the broadest measure of trade because it includes transfer payments and investment income, Bloomberg News said.
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Data so far this quarter indicate the gap may continue to narrow, Bloomberg noted. The monthly shortfall fell in January to $59.1 billion from December’s $61.6 billion.
“I think we’re going to see further improvement in 2007, as a more competitive dollar and global growth help U.S. exports,” said Richard DeKaser, chief economist at National City Corp. in Cleveland. “By no means are we out of the woods, though. There’s a huge appetite for foreign capital in the U.S.”
For all of 2006, the gap grew to a record $856.7 billion, from the previous year’s $791.5 billion, and totaled a record 6.5 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.
Prices of imported goods rose 0.2 percent in February, after falling 0.9 percent the month before, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said in a separate report today. Meanwhile, the export price index rose 0.7 percent, in its fourth straight month of advances. It gained 0.4 percent in January.
Additional information on the U.S. International Transactions report is available at www.bea.gov. Information on the U.S. Import and Export Price Indexes report is available at www.bls.gov.
