Sixth Edition of the IMF's Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual
Last Updated: March 2008Introduction
The IMF's Statistics Department has completed a second publicly released draft version of the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6). The chapters and appendices are presented hereafter.
Specific questions and comments on this new draft of the BPM6, with particular reference to clarity and detail, are welcome and should be sent by the attached form by June 20, 2008 to bpm5update@imf.org. However, it will not be possible at this stage of the drafting of BPM6 to address new issues or to reopen issues that have been settled. A revised version of BPM6 is expected to be posted on the website by the end of 2008.
A discussion of the major themes arising from the BPM5 update is presented in the attached document: Update of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, fifth edition. More detailed information on the specific changes from BPM5 are provided in Appendix 8.
The main changes between the March 2007 and the March 2008 draft versions of BPM6 are presented in the following document: Note for Reviewers.
For your information, the parallel update of the System of National Accounts is moving forward, and the UN Statistical Commission has adopted in principle Chapters 1 through 17 (Volume 1) of the SNA, with a two-month period (through end–April) for stakeholders to examine the conceptual coherence and consistency of the System with the agreed recommendations. Any comments arising that are relevant for BPM6 will be considered by the BPM6 editors. Volume 1 of the SNA is available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/sna1993/sui.asp.
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Overview of the Framework
Chapter 3. Accounting Principles
Chapter 4. Economic Territory, Units, Institutional Sectors, and Residence
Chapter 5. Classifications of Financial Assets and Liabilities
Chapter 6. Functional Categories
Chapter 7. International Investment Position
Chapter 8. Financial Account
Chapter 9. Other Changes in Financial Assets and Liabilities Account
Chapter 10. Goods and Services Account
Chapter 11. Primary Income Account
Chapter 12. Secondary Income Account
Chapter 13. Capital Account
Chapter 14. Selected Issues in Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Analysis
Appendix 1. Exceptional Financing Transactions
Appendix 2. Debt Reorganization and Related Transactions
Appendix 3. Regional Arrangements: Currency Unions, Economic Unions, and Other Regional Statements
Appendix 4. Statistics on the Activities of Multinational Enterprises
Appendix 5. Remittances
Appendix 6a. Direct Investment
Appendix 6b. Financial Leases
Appendix 6c. Insurance, Pension Funds, and Standardized Guarantees
Appendix 7. Relationship to SNA
Appendix 8. Changes from BPM5
Appendix 9. Standard Components and Selected Other Items
Background
The IMF Committee on Balance of Payments Statistics (the Committee) has agreed that it would be appropriate to revise BPM5 for a number of reasons:
- the international economic and financial environment has changed significantly since BPM5 was published in 1993;
- there is an increase in the focus on positions statistics;
- a new round of trade negotiations has led, inter alia, to the publication of a manual on statistics of international trade in services;
- there has been development work on the statistical treatment of reverse transactions, accrued interest, financial derivatives, and nonproduced nonfinancial assets; and
- new frameworks have been developed in other statistical areas, in particular in monetary and financial, government finance, and external debt statistics and the data template for international reserves and foreign currency liquidity.
Further, a range of other methodological issues has been discussed by the Committee in recent years.
The Committee agreed to the target date of 2008 for revising BPM5. This target date fitted well with the proposal to complete a review of the System of National Accounts 1993 by 2008; it is important that the two systems remain consistent to the maximum extent possible. Information on the revision of the 1993 SNA is available on the UN Website at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/snarev1.asp
Annotated outlineThe AO, which was published in April 2004, is a discussion document that was used to provide guidance in the development of the new manual. The AO was produced by IMF staff and reviewed by the Committee and other groups. The final format and content of the AO was agreed by the Committee at its meeting in December 2003. It was circulated widely, including to balance of payments compilers, for information and comment. Comments received have been considered during the drafting of the new manual.
The AO is available in Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish.
Process for producing the new manualA process of development and consultation to produce the first version of the draft manual involved the preparation of issues and position papers, discussions by the Committee, technical expert groups, and other interested groups including the Inter-Secretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA). Four technical expert groups (one focusing on issues related to direct investment—DITEG, one focusing on issues related to monetary and economic unions—CUTEG, one focusing on issues related to reserve assets—RESTEG, and one working on all other areas of balance of payments and international investment position statistics—BOPTEG) were formed to support this work. The documents of these four groups are placed on this website for information and comment. Background information on the work of these groups is available on the technical expert group introductory page.
At this time, it is understood that new issues will not be considered for inclusion in the new manual. This is necessary to accommodate the broad process of review and consultation that will take place before the manual is finalized at the end of 2008. Remaining issues will be placed on a research agenda, and work will continue on these issues; any need to further update the manual will follow the procedures established by the Committee (refer to Committee paper BOPCOM-01/33 Updating BPM5: A Proposal on How to Proceed).
The final document, subject only to editing, will be placed on the IMF website by late 2008. It is expected that the new manual will be made available in hardcopy in 2009 in English, with publication in other languages to follow.
Once the new manual is available, the revision of the Balance of Payments Textbook and the Balance of Payments Compilation Guide will be addressed.
This website will be updated from time to time to provide information on the revision process. The Committee website contains more information on the revision process, as well as on technical issues (see the Annual Reports and the Statistical Papers by Topic).