India's current account deficit widens in January-March

MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's current account deficit widened to $3.4 billion, or 0.6 percent of gross domestic product, in the January-March quarter from the same period a year earlier, the Reserve Bank of India said in a statement on Thursday.

That compared with a deficit of $0.3 billion, or 0.1 percent of GDP in the same quarter of 2016, and a deficit of $8 billion, or 1.4 percent of the GDP in the October-December quarter, according to the RBI data.

For the full year till March, current account deficit narrowed to 0.7 percent of GDP, from 1.1 percent in 2015/16, on the back of contraction in trade deficit, the RBI said in a statement.

 

Meanwhile, the balance of payments for January-March saw a surplus of $7.3 billion compared with a surplus of $3.3 billion a year ago, the RBI said.

The country's capital and financial account surplus stood at $3.1 billion in the March quarter versus $0.2 billion in the same quarter a year ago. http://bit.ly/2sDgTH5

(Reporting by Swati Bhat and Devidutta Tripathy; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)