The surplus on the services (invisibles) balance widened, in the same period, to US$3.1bn, from US$2.2bn a year earlier, thanks to a large increase in receipts from the Suez Canal (up by 14%, to US$1bn) and a smaller rise in tourism revenue (up by 5.6%, to US$2.5bn). Thanks to rising global interest rates, investment income also grew markedly, by 66.9%, to US$646m, up from US$387m a year earlier. Invisibles payments, however, declined slightly, to US$2.2bn, from US$2.5bn a year earlier, owing to small contractions in transportation and government transfers. Finally, the surplus on the balance of transfers widened slightly, by US$62m to US$1.4bn. The net result was a clear widening of the current-account surplus, from US$208m in July-September 2005 to US$1.4bn in the same period of 2006.