Japan's January current account logs surplus for seventh straight month

Japan logged a current account surplus for the seventh straight month in January, with the balance standing at 61.4 billion yen, or $509 million, led by increased exports amid a weaker yen as well as smaller oil imports, the government said Monday.
The balance, a turnaround from a deficit of 1.59 trillion yen the year before, marked its first surplus for the month since 2011, the Finance Ministry said. The size of the improvement was the largest since comparable data became available in 1985, Japan's News Agency (Kyodo) reported.
Exports grew 15.3 percent from a year earlier to 6.33 trillion yen, while imports decreased 8.9 percent to 7.20 trillion yen, pushing down the goods trade deficit by 1.54 trillion yen to 864.2 billion yen, the ministry said in a preliminary report.