BoG recently released the Greek balance of payments for July 2015 (which is actually the first release where the data are based on ELSTAT rather than bank transactions). The release is the first after the imposition of capital controls (following the announcement of the Greek referendum) and includes some quite interesting developments.

Compared to July of 2014 the balance of payments increased to €4.25bn (from €1.27bn), an increase of close to €3bn. The major movements in specific categories are as follows:

  • The fuel balance dropped from -€726mn to -€227mn mostly due to a large fall in fuel imports of €731mn (although exports also fell €241mn). A large part of the drop is probably due to much lower oil prices compared to a year ago.
  • Purchases of ships were nil compared to €114mn last year.
  • Other goods imports fell strongly by €730mn to a little more than €2bn (while the average figure during the first 7 months of 2015 was around €2.6bn).
  • Apart from travel receipts all categories of the services balance dropped significantly, especially payments abroad (-€690mn) and transport receipts (-€700mn).
  • Secondary income receipts (basically government receipts from the EU) increased substantially by €1.75bn.

The effects of capital controls were very strong on most elements of the goods and services balances. It is helpful that exports of other goods did not seem to be affected and actually increased by €50mn. It will be interesting to observe August figures (when they do get released) to determine to what extent the drop in goods and services imports was permanent or just postdated.

The improvement of the goods and services balance was €1.24bn in a single month. As long as this improvement is permanent I think it is reason enough to not expect a large fall in Greek GDP during 2015Q3. Even a nominal drop of 6% during the third quarter (which is consistent with a fall of 5% in real GDP if the VAT increases are taken into consideration) is equal to roughly €2.9bn. In other words, the improvement of the July balance of goods and services is close to 40% of that drop. As long as the August external balance figures are also positive news it is very hard for Greek internal demand to negate the positive impact of the external sector. Third quarter GDP might actually prove to be quite resilient.