MACAO, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- The current account surplus of China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) in 2017 was preliminarily estimated at 134.5 billion patacas (about 16.7 billion U.S. dollars), the SAR's monetary watchdog said on Thursday.

The Monetary Authority of Macao added that the overall balance of payments (BOP) surplus of Macao in 2017 stood at 1.6 billion patacas (about 198 million U.S. dollars).

The BOP, which comprises the current account, the capital account and the financial account, is a statistical statement that summarizes external transactions of an economy with the rest of the world.

Exports of goods increased by 12.4 percent year-on-year while imports of goods rose mildly by 0.2 percent. As a result, the merchandise trade deficit narrowed from 80.0 billion patacas (about 9.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016 to 78.7 billion patacas (about 9.8 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017.

Meanwhile, service exports rose by 16.6 percent, mainly attributable to increasing exports of travel services, and service imports also grew by 15.1 percent. Therefore the services account surplus rose from 231.2 billion patacas (about 28.7 billion U.S. dollars) in 2016 to 270.0 billion patacas (about 33.5 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017.

The primary income account, which reflects cross-border flows of factor income, recorded a net outflow of 32.8 billion patacas (about 4.1 billion U.S. dollars) in 2017, with inflows and outflows reaching 41.3 billion patacas (about 5.1 billion U.S. dollars) and 74.1 billion patacas (about 9.2 billion U.S. dollars) respectively.

The secondary income account, which comprises current transfers between Macao residents and non-residents, recorded a net outflow of 24.0 billion patacas (about 3.0 billion U.S. dollars), with inflows and outflows reaching 1.8 billion patacas (about 223.1 million U.S. dollars) and 25.8 billion patacas (about 3.2 billion U.S. dollars) respectively.

As the large invisible trade surplus offset the deficit in merchandise trade as well as net outflows of primary and secondary income, the current account surplus totaled 134.5 billion patacas (about 16.7 billion U.S. dollars), up by 35.7 billion patacas (about 4.4 billion U.S. dollars) from 2016.