Current account deficit in Ukraine rose by 73.9% y/y to USD 2.012bn, up from USD 1.553bn in August and USD 1.48bn in July, the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has announced. In m/m terms, current account deficit rose by 29.6%. In Jan-Sep, current account deficit increased by 7% y/y to USD 10.2bn.

Balance of payments deficit contracted in September 10.5-fold y/y and 2.2-fold m/m to USD 105mn. In Jan-Sep, BoP was in surplus at 1.5bn compared to a deficit of USD 798mn seen in Jan-Sep 2012.

Surplus of the capital transactions account and financial operations was USD 1.907bn in September against USD 1.321bn in August.

The NBU predicts a consolidated balance-of-payment surplus at this year-end, Serhii Nikolaichuk, an assistant director general of the NBU Economic Department, said. The financial account surplus will completely overturn the current account deficit of the balance of payments by the end of 2013, thus achieving a consolidated surplus of the balance of payments, the NBU estimates.  The current account deficit will narrow at 1.5-2% of GDP in 2013 against 2012, Nikolaichuk said.

In the medium term, the NBU plans to follow the trend and reduce the current account deficit to 3-4% of GDP, Nikolaichuk stressed. The reasons for the deficit reduction is the reduction of energy imports in 2013 and a lack of imports of the products imported to Ukraine last year within the preparations for Euro-2012.

Moreover, NBU expects its foreign-exchange reserves to stop falling and at least remain at the current level until the end of 2013 or even increase, since most the payments on the country's external obligations were made in the first half of 2013.