Changes introduced in this bulletin 2005
June
CHAPTER 16. BALANCE OF PAYMENTS AND INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT POSITION VIS-À-VIS OTHER EURO AREA RESIDENTS AND THE REST OF THE WORLD
In this edition the Balance of Payments time series has been revised and certain changes have been made to the Balance of Payments tables.
The Banco de España has revised the time series of some of the main Balance of Payments items for the period 1995-2004, coinciding with the publication of the March 2005 data. The revision has been co-ordinated with the release by INE, in May 2005, of the data for GDP and its components using the new base year 2000 Spanish National Accounts framework. The items concerned generally relate to the current account, although other changes have been made, bearing - less significantly - on the capital account and on the financial account. More specifically, the changes introduced are significant in the following captions: merchandise, tourism and travel, merchandise transport services, income and transfers.
The aim of the time series revision is threefold: to give a truer view of the real situation of the Spanish external sector, to adhere more closely to the methodological recommendations of the Balance of Payments Manual and to reduce the differences with the data from the National Accounts Rest of the World Account. The main changes introduced have been co-ordinated by the institutions responsible for the compilation of both statistics.
The press release relating to the publication of the March data (http://www.bde.es/bpagos/divisas/notabal.pdf) has an annex explaining in detail the objective characteristics and results of this revision. The annex can also be found in the section "other notes" in the Balance of Payments page which is available, in turn, on the Banco de España website (www.bde.es). During July, this note will be replaced by that included in the methodological notes section of the (forthcoming) annual publication "Spanish Balance of Payments and International Investment Position 2004", which will be more detailed. Also available that month will be an article that is to be published in the June 2005 edition of the "Boletín Económico".
As regards the amendments made to the breakdowns in the Balance of Payments tables, reference should first be made to the opening, in table 16.10, of the sector General Government, in Spanish portfolio investment abroad. In a consistent fashion, on 30 June, when the International Investment Position for 2005 Q1 is published, the opening of this sector will be made in table 16.23, dedicated to the breakdown by sector and by instrument of Spanish portfolio positions abroad.
Second, direct investment, both outward and inward, shall include from 1995 a new component, which has been estimated, for the first time, on the occasion of the revision of the time series. What are involved here are reinvested earnings, which are included in all the tables that break direct investment down by instrument. The columns of tables 16.8, 16.9, 16.10, 16.11, 16.12 and 16.13 are now called "Other forms of equity and reinvested earnings" instead of "Other forms of equity".
Finally, foreign direct investment in Spain includes, also for the first time, quoted shares issued by residents and acquired by non-resident direct investors. These transactions had previously been included in portfolio investment, along with the remaining transactions with quoted shares issued by residents. For this reason, the notes referring to this limitation of the data have been eliminated in tables 16.11, 16.12 and 16.13, on one hand, and, on the other, the headings "Unquoted shares" for the related columns of foreign direct investment in Spain have been changed to "Shares". This change is not necessary in the International Investment Position tables since they had already been including, in the positions of foreign direct investment in Spain, those relating to quoted shares. Accordingly, with this change the Balance of Payments has managed to improve the consistency between both statistics.