Japan posts biggest current-account surplus in year as yen falls

Japan’s current-account surplus rose in March to the highest level in a year as a depreciating yen boosted repatriated earnings and brightened the outlook for the nation’s exports.

The excess in the widest measure of trade was 1.25 trillion yen ($12.4 billion), the Ministry of Finance said in Tokyo today. That exceeded the 1.22 trillion yen median estimate of 23 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.

The yen breached 100 per dollar for the first time in four years in New York trading yesterday as central bank Governor Haruhiko Kuroda rolls out unprecedented monetary easing to revive the world’s third-biggest economy. Sustaining a current-account surplus may help to maintain confidence in the nation’s finances as officials wrestle with a public debt burden more than twice the size of the economy.

“The income surplus is increasing on the weakening yen, especially for March when Japanese companies tend to repatriate their overseas profits back home,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, chief economist at Itochu Corp. in Tokyo. “The positive impact of this on export volume will probably be seen more after June, helping to narrow the trade deficit.”

The cost of a weaker yen is higher import costs, reflected in a ninth straight trade deficit in March. The current-account surplus was 4 percent lower than the same month last year,

The yen was at 100.80 per dollar as of 9:01 a.m. in Tokyo. (Bloomberg)