After a nine-month long hiatus, India's current account balance, representing the country's net income from trade and investments abroad, turned positive at $4.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008-09 on decline in import oil and commodities bill.
However, the country's capital account balance remained in the negative at $4.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008-09, which means that it received less capital from abroad, since both sentiments for both FDI and FIIs were dampened.
Even as FIIs pulled back money invested in securities to the tune of $2.6 billion in Q4, it was less than $3.73 billion net outflow under a year ago.
According to the data released by the Reserve Bank of India today, the current account turned surplus at $4.7 billion compared to $1.5 billion deficit a year ago.
Current account was deficit at $13.03 billion in the third quarter, $12.5 billion in second quarter and $9.02 billion in the first quarter of 2008-09.
Analysts attributed surplus current account to lowering of oil and commodity prices worldwide, which resulted in lower import bill and not so sharp hit in services exports.
"Commodity and oil prices had crashed and services sector export did not take a big hit, so current account balance turned positive," Crisil Principal Economist D K Joshi said.
