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June 1999 - Article - Note on the revision of the BOP's accounting framework
Published Date:
1999-06-18
Author:
S.S. Walters
Last Modified Date:
2020-10-01, 09:31 PM
Category:
Quarterly Bulletins > Articles and Notes
Since the publication of the fourth edition of the Balance of Payments Manual (BOPM4) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1977, the world economy has experienced substantial changes in the scope and complexity of international transactions. These changes resulted from the liberalisation of financial markets, the widespread abolition of capital controls, innovations in the creation of financial instruments and new approaches to the restructuring of external debt. In addition, international trade in services grew strongly. All these developments necessitated changes in the recording and the classification of such transactions within the structure of the balance of payments accounts. Furthermore, there was a need to integrate and harmonise balance of payments data with the revised System of National Accounts (SNA) and the IMF’s statistical systems on money and banking and government finance.The fifth edition of the IMF’s Balance of Payments Manual (BOPM5) issued in September 1993 standardises the concepts, definitions and classifications of international transactions and helps to facilitate the collection, the organisation and comparability of balance of payments and international investment position statistics.