The Statistics Department of the International Monetary Fund is pleased to make available to subscribers the Balance of Payments Statistics (BOP) database through an easy-to-use online service. The BOP database contains time series data from 1948. The Web interface allows subscribers to browse the database, select series of interest, display the selected series in a spreadsheet format, and save the selected series for transfer to other software systems such as Microsoft Excel®.

Balance of Payments Statistics summarizes, for a specific period, the economic transactions of an economy with the rest of the world. It reports total goods, services, factor income, and current transfers an economy receives from or provides to the rest of the world as well as capital transfers and changes in each economy's external financial claims and liabilities.

System Overview

The BOP Online system is based on the BOP CD-ROM Browser product, and many of the functions are quite similar. BOP Online provides the same data coverage as the BOP Browser product. The BOP database contains approximately 100,000 time series covering more than 170 countries and areas and includes all series appearing on the BOP Country Pages; regional and world totals for major components of the balance of payments are also presented.

The Country and World Tables, as presented in the annual printed copy of BOP, are available as selection options. The Economic Concept View provides a cross-country view of the concepts in the BOP by individual or groups of countries.

Capabilities of BOP Online

BOP Online includes the following capabilities for:

• browsing the directory tree,
• drilling down through the structure of the database,
• selecting either individual time series or groupings of time series within a table presentation,
• saving selected data and metadata in a variety of formats, including a spreadsheet,
• and saving and loading a query of selected time series.

The Statistics Department envisages that this product will be further developed and enhanced over time, and will be updated on a more frequent basis. Subscribers will be advised of further enhancements as they become available.