Bank of Lithuania publishes December 2024 balance of payments showing current account swing to EUR 62.8 million surplus

The Bank of Lithuania released Lithuania’s balance of payments statistics for December 2024, reporting that the current account balance shifted from a EUR 5.0 million deficit in November to a EUR 62.8 million surplus. The improvement was mainly driven by the primary income balance moving into surplus and a larger surplus in services. The primary income balance recorded a EUR 52.8 million surplus, attributed to higher inflows of European Union subsidies and lower investment expenditure. The services surplus rose 23.5% to EUR 598.3 million as services exports and imports increased by 10.3% and 4.2%, respectively, while a sharper fall in goods exports than imports (down 14.8% and 6.0%) widened the foreign trade deficit by 63.5% to EUR 630.5 million. The secondary income balance posted a EUR 42.2 million surplus, with EU support fund transfers down 5.4% to EUR 63.3 million and Lithuania’s calculated EU budget contributions up 25.5% to EUR 55.7 million; personal transfers from abroad increased 29.1% to EUR 102.2 million and transfers from Lithuania fell 15.3% to EUR 56.6 million. The financial account showed a negative net flow of EUR 423.6 million, driven by negative other investment (EUR 2.1 billion) and direct investment (EUR 260.2 million), partly offset by a EUR 1.5 billion increase in official reserve assets. The central bank noted that detailed December balance of payments data are available via its external statistics portal, including through its My Data Sets tool for creating and automatically updating custom datasets.