The external position of the Deutsche Bundesbank
- Dissemination practice
- Methodological notes
- Data sources
- Data template on international reserves and foreign currency liquidity
Dissemination practice
The external position is calculated by the Deutsche Bundesbank each month and published approximately one to two weeks after the end of the reporting month.
The external position is disseminated in the following form:
- Time series database
- Monthly Report
- Statistical Supplement 3 Balance of payments statistics
Methodological notes
The external position is a monthly stock statistic. The separately reported reserve assets comprise gold, the reserve position with the IMF, special drawing rights and foreign exchange reserves. The latter include tradable and liquid claims in foreign currency on debtors domiciled outside the euro area. Other external assets include claims within the Eurosystem (including claims on the ECB from “TARGET balances”, “Share of the ECB’s capital” and “Claims arising from the transfer of reserve assets to the ECB”) as well as claims arising from securities and deposits which do not meet reserve asset criteria. A distinction is made between claims on euro-area and non-euro-area residents. The same distinction criterion applies to the external liabilities of the Bundesbank, which are mainly comprised of non-residents’ deposits. The stocks reported in the external position are valued in each case at market prices as at the end of each reporting period.
Regarding the concepts, the definitions, and the presentations of the results, the German balance of payments statistics follow the methodological guidelines of the IMF’s 5th Balance of Payments Manual (BPM5), the guidelines of the ECB's statistical reporting requirements for the balance of payments, the interna-tional investment position and foreign reserves (ECB/2004/15 and ECB/2007/3) and the manual “Statistical treatment of the Eurosystem's international reserves”, ECB 2000.
Data sources
The data for determining the external position are largely taken from the accounting system of the Deutsche Bundesbank.
Data template on international reserves and foreign currency liquidity
The “data template on international reserves and foreign currency liquidity” is a common publication scheme. The scheme was developed jointly by the IMF and the BIS’s “Committee on the Global Financial System” to improve the transparency of reserve assets in response to the financial crises of the 1990s (for more information, see “Methodological notes” below).
Dissemination practice
The “data template on international reserves and foreign currency liquidity” is compiled monthly by the Bundesbank as at the end of each reporting period. The main components are published five working days after the end of each month as part of the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) on the National Summary Data Page (NSDP) of the Federal Statistical Office.
The complete publication scheme, based on the SDDS, is provided on the Internet by the middle of the following month. The actual dissemination date is announced in the release schedule.
These data are also published monthly on the Bundesbank website at Tables.
Methodological notes
The “data template on international reserves and foreign currency liquidity” provides a detailed overview of the German international reserves (reserve assets) (see “External position of the Bundesbank”) and other foreign currency assets, as well as potential and predetermined short-term foreign currency inflows and outflows (including Federal government claims and liabilities). In addition to traditional balance sheet data, it also contains off-balance-sheet positions, if any.
The “international reserves and foreign currency liquidity” statistics comply with internationally agreed concepts in their conceptual design, methodology and presentation (“International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity - Guidelines for a Data Template“, IMF 2001 and “Statistical treatment of the Eurosystem's international reserves”, ECB 2000).
Metadata are available on the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) as an SDDS indicator. They describe the methodological, conceptual and institutional framework for the dissemination of the German “international reserves and foreign currency liquidity”.
Data sources
The data for creating the “data template on international reserves and foreign currency liquidity” are largely taken from the accounting system of the Deutsche Bundesbank and the publications of the German Finance Agency (Bundesrepublik Deutschland Finanzagentur GmbH) concerning the Federal government’s stock data.