Accounts of current transactions, capital transactions and financial transactions
BOP The two principal parts of the BOP accounts are the current account and the capital account.
The current account shows the net amount a country is earning if it is in surplus, or spending if it is in deficit. It is the sum of the balance of trade (net earnings on exports minus payments for imports), factor income (earnings on foreign investments minus payments made to foreign investors) and cash transfers. It is called the current account as it covers transactions in the "here and now" - those that don't give rise to future claims.
The Capital Account records the net change in ownership of foreign assets. It includes the reserve account (the foreign exchange market operations of a nation's central bank), along with loans and investments between the country and the rest of world (but not the future regular repayments/dividends that the loans and investments yield; those are earnings and will be recorded in the current account). The term "capital account" is also used in the narrower sense that excludes central bank foreign exchange market operations: Sometimes the reserve account is classified as "below the line" and so not reported as part of the capital account.
Expressed with the broader meaning for the capital account, the BOP identity assumes that any current account surplus will be balanced by a capital account deficit of equal size - or alternatively a current account deficit will be balanced by a corresponding capital account surplus:
The balancing item, which may be positive or negative, is simply an amount that accounts for any statistical errors and assures that the current and capital accounts sum to zero. By the principles of double entry accounting, an entry in the current account gives rise to an entry in the capital account, and in aggregate the two accounts automatically balance. A balance isn't always reflected in reported figures for the current and capital accounts, which might, for example, report a surplus for both accounts, but when this happens it always means something has been missed—most commonly, the operations of the country's central bank—and what has been missed is recorded in the statistical discrepancy term (the balancing item).
An actual balance sheet will typically have numerous sub headings under the principal divisions. For example, entries under Current account might include:
Trade – buying and selling of goods and services
Exports – a credit entry
Imports – a debit entry
Trade balance – the sum of Exports and Imports
Factor income – repayments and dividends from loans and investments
Factor earnings – a credit entry
Factor payments – a debit entry
Factor income balance – the sum of earnings and payments.
Especially in older balance sheets, a common division was between visible and invisible entries. Visible trade recorded imports and exports of physical goods (entries for trade in physical goods excluding services is now often called the merchandise balance). Invisible trade would record international buying and selling of services, and sometimes would be grouped with transfer and factor income as invisible earnings.
The term "balance of payments surplus" (or deficit — a deficit is simply a negative surplus) refers to the sum of the surpluses in the current account and the narrowly defined capital account (excluding changes in central bank reserves). Denoting the balance of payments surplus as BOP surplus, the relevant identity is
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) use a particular set of definitions for the BOP accounts, which is also used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations System of National Accounts (SNA).
The main difference in the IMF's terminology is that it uses the term "financial account" to capture transactions that would under alternative definitions be recorded in the capital account. The IMF uses the term capital account to designate a subset of transactions that, according to other usage, form a small part of the overall capital account.[6] The IMF separates these transactions out to form an additional top level division of the BOP accounts. Expressed with the IMF definition, the BOP identity can be written:
The IMF uses the term current account with the same meaning as that used by other organizations, although it has its own names for its three leading sub-divisions, which are:
The goods and services account (the overall trade balance)
The primary income account (factor income such as from loans and investments)
The secondary income account (transfer payments)