External sector

International Investment Position - External Debt Statistics

The International Investment Position (IIP) for Germany is the statistical statement that presents the value and composition of the stock of German financial claims on non-residents and German financial liabilities to non-residents as of the end of the respective period.

Dissemination Practice for the German IIP

The data category IIP is published under tables for the end of each quarter with a time-lag of one quarter after the end of the reference period. Every year in September, based on more detailed data sources, an IIP for the preceding year-end is published as a press release. The actual date for the quarterly IIP data as well as for the annual press release are announced in the advance release calendar.

Additional IIP data are available from the Statistical Supplement 3 Balance of Payments Statistics combined with the comprehensive time-series service .

The revision policy and publication dates for the Balance of Payments and the IIP statistics are based on the availability of the data and on users' interests.

Methodological Notes

The German IIP complies conceptually, methodologically and in its presentation with the internationally agreed fifth edition of the IMF’s Balance of Payments Manual (BPM5).

As SDDS-Indicator, the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) contains metadata on the methodological, conceptional and institutional framework of the German IIP.

Further methodological information are available from the European Union Balance of Payments / International Investment Position Statistical Methods (BOP Book) where Balance of Payments and IIP methods and compilation practices for all EU-countries are explained. An update is released annually in November.

Details on methodological adjustments over time within the German IIP are described in the Press Release of December 1999.

External Debt

Dissemination Practice for External Debt Statistics

As member of the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) of the IMF, Germany is obliged to publish the statistics on External Debt.

The External Debt figures are only a fraction of the German International Investment Position and show the debt side of the overall financial relationships of Germany with countries abroad.

This data category is published quarterly solely on the Bundesbank website under tables. The actual release dates are available from the advance release calendar.

The Quarterly External Debt Database, jointly developed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, brings together detailed external debt data that are published individually by countries that subscribe to the IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) in one central location. This database also provides revised back data for previous periods.

Methodological Notes

The German statistics on External Debt complies conceptually, methodologically and with its presentation to the internationally agreed External Debt Manual (External Debt Statistics: Guide for Compilers and Users ).

As SDDS-Indicator, the IMF's Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) contains metadata on the methodological, conceptional and institutional framework of the German External Debt and its dissociation from the German IIP.