Target Audience
Officials whose main responsibility is compiling balance of payments and/or international investment position statistics.
Qualifications
Participants should have a degree in economics, statistics, or the equivalent experience.
Course Description
This one-week course is the first regional course to be offered on this topic. It is designed for officials from agencies responsible for compiling data on international reserves and other external positions of the monetary authorities. Participants should have experience and/or responsibilities in the area of international reserves. The course explains the international statistical standards for compiling data on international reserves, as set forth in the sixth edition of the IMF’s Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6) and the recently updated Data Template on International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity: Guidelines for a Data Template (Guidelines). The Guidelines were first issued in 2001 and have now been updated to ensure consistency with the text of BPM6, to improve clarity, and to take account of the changes in 2009 to the Reserves Data Template itself in response to an IMF Executive Board decision.
The course provides an overview of the concepts and definitions pertaining to reserve assets in BPM6, and discusses in depth the reporting of data on the Reserves Data Template. (A Reserves Data Template must be disseminated monthly by subscribers to the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard.) In regard to the Reserves Data Template, the course outlines its structure and key features, clarifies concepts, definitions, and classifications, and discusses dissemination of data along with country notes. The course discusses complex statistical issues, including the reporting of lending to the IMF, foreign exchange swap agreements between central banks, pooled assets, the identification of reserves by members of currency unions, and other topics related to international reserves. The course includes sessions during which analytical and practical aspects of the Reserves Data Template are presented and discussed by the participants among themselves (with IMF staff monitoring and contributing to the discussions), in order to share countries’ experiences and questions.
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