Record travel balance surplus due to surge of foreign visitors

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/15001575

Foreign visitors take in the traditional architecture of Takayama in Gifu Prefecture. (Yoshihiro Ogino) 

Foreign tourists were credited with helping Japan to achieve a record travel surplus of 336.8 billion yen ($2.3 billion) in July.

The Finance Ministry, in releasing preliminary balance of payments statistics for July on Sept. 8, said it was the largest figure since records were first kept in 1996.

The travel balance is calculated by deducting the amount Japanese travelers spend overseas from the total spent by foreign visitors in Japan.

The July figure was up 311.7 billion yen over July of last year, highlighting surging tourist numbers with the ending of entry restrictions due to the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The largest travel balance surplus until now had been the 296.2 billion yen recorded in January 2020, just before the COVID-19 health scare.

The surplus sank to about 20 billion yen a month during the pandemic, but since December 2022 the surplus has increased to above 200 billion yen.

The latest surplus was due not only to a large increase in foreign tourists, but also a slow recovery in Japanese traveling overseas.

According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, 2,320,600 foreign tourists arrived in Japan in July, about 80 percent of the level of July 2019 before the pandemic.

In contrast, only 891,600 Japanese traveled abroad that month, about half the figure of July 2019.