On the external front, we continue to have a comfortable external payments position with gross international reserves at an all-time high of around $ 100bn. External debt ratio/GDP remained low at 23.7 percent at end-June 2020, even with the recent increase in external borrowing to fund additional government spending to address the pandemic.
Both our current account and BOP remained in surplus in the first semester. We project a current account surplus equivalent to 1.6 percent of GDP this year, up from a deficit of 0.5 percent of GDP as of May 2020. We expect BOP to post a surplus of around 2.2 percent of GDP, up from 0.2 percent of GDP as of May 2020.