Almost 11 billion euros flowed into Greece from tourism up until July

Higher tourist arrivals helped drive up Greece’s services balance surplus in the first seven months of 2024, according to figures for the balance of payments in January-July 2024 released by the Bank of Greece on Friday.

It attributed the increase to, primarily, the travel balance and, secondarily, the transport and other services balances. Non-residents’ arrivals increased by 11.2% year-on-year and the relevant receipts rose by 5.6%, rising to 10.95 billion euros.

In spite of this, the central bank reported that in July 2024, the current account surplus decreased year-on-year due to a deterioration in the balance of goods, the balance of services and the primary income account, while the secondary income account improved slightly.

In January-July 2024, the current account deficit increased by 1.3 billion euros year-on-year and stood at 8.6 billion euros. This primarily reflected an increase of the goods deficit, as exports dropped while imports increased. At current prices, goods exports fell by 1.3% (‑4.3% at constant prices) and goods imports grew by 4.1% (4.8% at constant prices).

More specifically, non-oil goods exports at current prices declined by 2.7%, while the corresponding imports increased by 5.4% (‑5.6% and 5.7% at constant prices, respectively).

In January-July 2024, the deficit of the combined current and capital account (which corresponds to the economy’s needs for financing from abroad) increased year-on-year and amounted to 9.1 billion euros.

Foreign direct investment in the same period showed a 978.1 million euro net flow under residents’ external assets and a 2.6 billion euros net flow under residents’ external liabilities, representing non-residents’ direct investment in Greece.

Under portfolio investment, a rise in residents’ external assets is mostly attributable to an increase of 3.3 billion euros in residents’ holdings of foreign bonds and Treasury bills. A rise in their liabilities is chiefly due to an increase of 6.1 billion euros in non-residents’ holdings of Greek bonds and Treasury bills and to a rise of 1.8 billion euros in non-residents’ holdings of Greek equities.

AMNA