The external sector performance remained subdued in August 2018. During the month, the deficit in the trade account narrowed marginally compared to a year earlier as the rise in export income outpaced the growth in import expenditure. Meanwhile, other inflows to the current account continued to be modest in August 2018 with a marginal increase in earnings from tourism and a decline in workers’ remittances. On a net basis, the financial account of the Balance of Payments (BOP) recorded outflows during the month, due to withdrawals of foreign investments from both the government securities market and the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) and continued debt service payments. These developments, alongside the broad based strengthening of the US dollar, continued to exert pressure on the exchange rate to depreciate, thus necessitating intervention by the Central Bank in the domestic foreign exchange market to curtail undue excessive volatility in the exchange rate. As at end August 2018, gross official reserves amounted to US dollars 8.6 billion. 

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) compiles and analyses several indicators, in order to monitor the developments in the real estate sector. Accordingly, the Land Price Index (LPI) (base year: 1998) has been compiled annually from 1998-2008 and bi-annually from 2009-2017, covering 50 centers of 5 DS divisions in the Colombo District. With the increasing importance of monitoring land prices due to the recent developments in the real estate sector, the geographical coverage of LPI was expanded to 82 centers covering all DS divisions in the Colombo District and revised its base period from 1998 to 1st half of 2017 to accommodate this expansion. The LPI with improved coverage is available bi-annually from 2017 onwards.

In view of the diverse nature of the land use and to maintain homogeneity, three sub-indices for residential, commercial and industrial lands are computed separately, using per perch bare land prices collected from the Government Valuation Department. The overall LPI is computed by taking the average of these three sub-indices.