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Balance of payments statistics (BoP), published in various publications of the Statistics Directorate (STD), are originally compiled by national agencies, i.e. national central banks or national statistical institutes, using the IMF's Balance of Payments Manual, 5th edition (BPM5). They are presented according to the standard presentation and classified by current account, capital and financial account, and errors and ommisions.
The current account consists of goods, services, income and transfers. Capital and financial accounts consist of capital account; direct, portfolio and other investments; financial derivatives; and changes in reserve assets. The current account series are published in raw and seasonally adjusted forms except for Greece and Ireland; the capital and financial accounts are in raw form only.
At present STD publishes about 25 BoP series at three frequencies: monthly or quarterly and annual. Data are mostly in national currencies except for a few countries which provide their data in US dollars. Data are compiled on a transaction basis except for a few monthly series, which are recorded on a cash basis. Thus, the scope, underlying concepts and breakdown can be different for the monthly and the quarterly/annual data.
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