The nation's current account surplus during the first half of fiscal 2001 declined 23.5 percent from a year earlier to 5.19 trillion yen, marking the second consecutive fall in the broadest measure of trade, the Finance Ministry said Wednesday in a preliminary report.
The current account surplus in September alone, however, registered a 10.8 percent year-on-year rise to 1.61 trillion yen, up for the first time since last November, due to an expanding surplus in income balance, the ministry said.
A ministry official attributed the shrinkage in the April-September period to the continuing slide of the nation's economy amid the ongoing global slowdown, adding that the depreciation of the yen also pushed up the yen-denominated value of imports.