EU Posts Current Account Surplus of €17.6 billion

Eurostat have said that the European Union (EU) has posted a surplus of 17.6 billion euros in March 2016.

These are favourable figures with a surplus of 10.7 billion euros that was found in February, and the 7.7 billion euro excess that the EU had in March last year.

There was also encouraging news from the goods account data, which increased in March compared to February by 15 billion euros, almost double the 8.7 billion euros surplus recorded in February.

Over the period of the past year, the EU current account for the period ending in March 2016 recorded a surplus of €174.5 billion, compared with 133.8 billion euros for the 12 months to March 2015.

The surplus of the goods account for the same period increased by 119.9 billion euros, a considerable difference to the 44.8 billion euros found in the previous year, while the surplus of the services account remained stable at 156.8 billion euros. 

Euro Continues Setbacks  

The EUR/USD rate has continued to favour the US dollar, even though the gains have been relatively mild so far.

This is despite positive figures from the United States, that claims for benefits have declined by 16,000 to a total 278,000 the federal labour department said, the biggest drop in claimant figures since February.

There has also been hawkish moves made by the president of the New York Federal Reserve William Dudley, who has said that he believes that a rate hike could happen as early as June or July.

In their daily report, LMAX Exchange said that there was not much from the European Central Bank’s (ECB) monetary policy meeting, that could influence issues.

Although they stressed the central bank’s faith that monetary policy efforts would help push inflation back to the 2% target.

ECB executive board member Benoit Coeure, has said that there will be no change to the minus 0.4% bank deposit rates, even though annual inflation rates are at minus 0.2, as released on Wednesday.

 Producer Prices Fall in Germany  

In April this year compared to the same month a year ago, producer prices fell by 3.1%, according to the German Federal Statistical Office.

Despite the fall in prices, the decline was stable with the annual price figures for March, where they again fell by 3.1%.

There was more positive news in the month on month comparison, as producers managed to increased their prices by 0.1% between March and April.

The data for April, saw that energy prices decreased by 8.8%, compared with April twelve months ago.

Prices of intermediate goods also fell by a significant 2.6%, and prices of non-durable consumer goods by 0.4%.

In contrast prices of capital goods rose by 0.6%, and prices of durable consumer goods by 1.3%.

The influence of energy costs was highlighted by producer prices excluding energy, which fell by a relatively slower pace of 1% in April year on year, and rose slightly by 0.1% compared with March this year.

The latest German inflation rate fell into a negative 0.1% in April, the first time that has happened since January 2015.