Training Program Course

This course provides participants with the necessary skills to compile and analyze the BSA matrix - i.e. three-dimensional financial statistics. The BSA allows participants to examine overall balance sheet linkages and identify, as well as evaluate specific exposures and vulnerabilities, such as an excessive reliance on external funding, leverage buildup in the corporate sector, excessive household debt, and overreliance on the banking sector for sovereign debt placement. The course presents a user-friendly BSA tool developed by the IMF, which combines the balance sheets of the financial sector, general government, and the external sector into a single matrix to generate a distribution of claims and liabilities on a from-whom-to-whom basis-an extremely useful tool for macro-financial analysis. Country officials identify critical data gaps, if any, for their respective countries through the process of creating a BSA matrix using their own data submission of financial, fiscal, and external sector statistics to the IMF.