International Monetary Fund

Templates for Minimum and Encouraged Set of Internationally Comparable Sectoral Accounts and Balance Sheets

Last Updated: July 28, 2017

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The G-20 Data Gaps Initiative outlined a number of recommendations for addressing data gaps arising from the recent global crisis. These recommendations were presented in the report of the IMF and Financial Stability Board Secretariat titled The Financial Crisis and Information Gaps. Recommendation 15 calls for developing "a strategy to promote the compilation and dissemination of the balance sheet approach, flow of funds, and sectoral data more generally, starting with G-20 economies."

The objective of Recommendation 15 is to expand the dissemination and reporting of internationally comparable and detailed annual and quarterly sectoral accounts by both G-20 economies and non-G-20 advanced economies. This expansion would involve improving the compilation of sectoral accounts in terms of details (sub-sectors and asset details), closing data gaps, and developing financial stocks and flows on a from-whom-to-whom basis. A Working Group on Sectoral Accounts was established under the auspices of the Inter Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics (IAG). The Working Group includes Bank for International Settlements, European Central Bank, Eurostat, IMF (Chair), OECD, and the United Nations.

An important milestone in taking forward the work on implementing Recommendation 15 is the development of templates for a minimum and encouraged set of internationally comparable sectoral accounts and balance sheets arrived at through a global consultative process led by the IMF. The process went through various stages as follows:

Through these discussions, the Working Group agreed on the following final set of templates:

Templates

To support the compilation of sectoral balance sheets and accumulation accounts, the IMF has initiated a series of seminars for IMF member countries.