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 travellers spend overseas from the total foreign visitors spend in Japan. The July figure was up 311.7 billion yen over July 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 to a significant increase in foreign tourists and a slow recovery in Japanese travelling overseas.