According to the balance of payments statistics released by the Ministry of Finance, the current account balance for the first half of this year, which shows how much Japan earned from trade and investment with overseas, was a surplus of 3.5057 trillion yen.
Compared to the same period last year, the surplus decreased by more than 6 trillion yen.
The reason for this is that the amount of imports has expanded significantly due to the sharp rise in the price of energy such as crude oil.