Ample liquidity in the market and improvement in the government’s fiscal position served to push the yields of bellwether 91-day Treasury bill rates down to 5.6 percent. Headline inflation decelerated to 7.1 percent in July, posting an average of 8.2 percent for the first seven months of the year. Our peso has been relatively resilient, trading below the $ level.
In the external sector, the balance of payments (BOP) posted a surplus of $ million for the first quarter of 2005l this is a turnaround from the $ million deficit in the same quarter last year. Meanwhile, remittances from overseas Filipino workers sustained double-digit growths.