At the same quarter last year, the current account, or balance of payments figures which represent the country's transactions relative to the rest of the world, stood at a $5.47 billion deficit, according to figures released by Statistics New Zealand yesterday.
Yesterday's $6 billion deficit was in line with expectations of economists and analysts polled earlier by news services Dow Jones and Reuters.
ASB chief economist Nick Tuffley said there were few immediate implications of the current account deficit, "which met expectations", highlighting instead that the effect on New Zealand of the "snowballing global economic fallout of the credit crunch" was a more pressing issue.
The past housing boom had fuelled the increasing deficit for some years, which had then eased with increasing oil exports and high dairy commodity prices, but the global credit crisis and recession is damaging domestic output.
"The deficit is heading the wrong way, given that external financial liabilities are more in focus than they have been for a long time," Mr Tuffley said.
The main factor swelling the September year deficit was an increase in the value of goods imports, mainly due to higher prices for petroleum and petroleum products, NZPA reported.
The annual deficit for the 12 months to September is $15.5 billion, compared with $14.9 billion for the 12 months to June, and now represents an increase to 8.6% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), which was up from 8.4% of GDP in the June year.
Mr Tuffley said the main driver of an increased current account deficit pushing toward 9% of GDP by early 2009 would be the global fall in commodity prices and weakening volumes of New Zealand exports.
However, by late-2009, Mr Tuffley expected a softening in domestic demand would reduce import demand and corporate profitability, plus falling interest rates helping service debts - all leading to a "shrinking" of the current account deficit.
Since the September 2007 year, the goods deficit had decreased by $912 million, while the investment income deficit was up $867 million.
The balance on services went from a surplus of $430 million for the September 2007 year to a deficit of $471 million for the September 2008 year.
GDP figures are due out today, unsurprisingly underscoring the present recession with consumers and companies tightening their belts in the face of dealing with a recession and negative growth during most of 2009.
