*http://www.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/index.html
Japan's current account surplus up 31.1%* Japan's current account surplus in May marked a record high for the month, increasing more than 30 percent from a year earlier. The Finance Ministry's preliminary report released on Wednesday says the current account surplus in May stood at 2 trillion 134 billion yen, or about 18 billion US dollars. This is a year-on-year increase of 31.1 percent. The trade surplus rose 1 percent from a year earlier to about 4 billion dollars. The ministry attributed the increase to brisk automobile exports to Europe and other factors, despite the rise in imports of cell phone handsets and other items from Asian countries. The income account surplus was up 36.6 percent to about 15 billion dollars, as domestic investors received more stock dividends from overseas. The Finance Ministry says the global trend of higher share prices has maintained the expansion of Japan's current account surplus. It says whether the expansion continues is likely to depend on the situation of the US economy and trends in foreign exchange rates. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
