Abstract
This chapter describes the purpose of this manual, the uses of government finance statistics, the structure of the government finance statistics system, major methodological changes from the previous edition of this manual, and methods of implementing the revised system.
Abstract
A distinguishing feature of emerging market crises in the 1990s and early 2000s was the sudden disruption in the capital accounts of key sectors of the economy. Capital account crises typically occur as creditors quickly lose confidence, prompting sudden and large-scale portfolio adjustments such as massive withdrawals of bank deposits, panic sales of securities, or abrupt halts of debt rollovers. As the exchange rate, interest rates, and other asset prices adjust, the balance sheet of an entire economy can sharply deteriorate.
Abstract
1.1 The purpose of the External Debt Statistics: Guide for Compilers and Users (the Guide) is to provide comprehensive guidance for the measurement and presentation of external debt statistics. It also provides advice on the compilation of these data and on their analytical use. The intention is to contribute to both an improvement in, and a greater understanding of, external debt statistics. In doing so, the Guide is responding to the concerns of markets and policymakers for better external debt statistics to help assess external vulnerabilities at a time when increasing international capital flows are resulting in greater market interdependence.
Abstract
1. International financial crises in the late 1990s underscored the importance of disseminating comprehensive information on countries’ international reserves and foreign currency liquidity1 on a timely basis. Deficiencies in such information have made it difficult to anticipate and respond to crises by obscuring financial weaknesses and imbalances. (See Box 1.1) Moreover, both the complexity and the importance of such information have increased as a result of the ongoing globalization of financial markets and financial innovations. The international financial activities2 that countries’ central banks and government entities undertake now occur in myriad forms, involve multiple domestic and foreign entities, and span locations around the globe. To assess countries’ foreign currency liquidity requires supplementing traditional data on international reserves that cover largely cross-border and balance-sheet activities with those on foreign currency positions and off-balance-sheet activities.
Abstract
This chapter describes the flows other than transactions that are recorded in the GFS system. The two major categories of these other economic flows are holding gains and other changes in the volume of assets.
Abstract
10.1 External debt statistics can be compiled from a variety of sources, using a range of methods. Statistics can be collected from the debtor, from the creditor, or indirectly through information from financial intermediaries in the form of surveys, regulatory reports, and/or from other government administrative records. But a precondition for reliable and timely statistics is that the country has a strong and well-organized institutional setting for the compilation of statistics on public debt—so that all public and publicly guaranteed debt is well monitored and managed (see UNCTAD, 1993)—and private debt, and for the compilation of aggregate external debt statistics.
Abstract
11.1 The Guide recommends that the collection of data on a government’s external debt be linked to the work of those responsible for managing the government’s debt position, for the purposes of administrative efficiency and quality control. Those responsible for government debt are invariably a government debt office, either within the ministry of finance or constituted as a separate agency within the government sector, or the central bank, or another government agency. For reasons outlined in the previous chapter, it is also important that the agency responsible for government data cooperate, as appropriate, with any other agencies involved with the compilation of external debt data.
Abstract
12.1 In circumstances where controls on foreign borrowing are still in place, it is possible for the central bank to compile information on private sector borrowing from information provided by borrowers for regulatory purposes, such as when they seek approval for foreign borrowing. Also, commercial banks might well be required to report on foreign transactions of their private sector clients. However, as liberalization of financial transactions proceeds, and such information becomes less readily available, there is a need to develop methods of collecting data on private sector debt through other means. This chapter considers the collection of these data from banks and “other sectors” when financial transactions are liberalized. The measurement of external debt in the form of traded securities is covered in the next chapter.
Abstract
13.1 External debt in the form of traded securities corresponds to debt securities in the inward portfolio investment component of the balance of payments and IIP. In recent decades, the relaxation of restrictions on the foreign investment activities of banks and other institutional investors, combined with continued financial innovation, has resulted in a surge of cross-border investment in bonds (and equities). This has increased the interest of policymakers in data on this activity.