External Debt Statistics - Guide for Compilers and Users

This volume, External Debt Statistics: Guide for Compilers and Users (the Guide), has been prepared under the joint responsibility of our eight organizations, through the mechanism of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Finance Statistics. The preparation of the Guide, under way since mid-1999, was based on the broad range of experience of our institutions in close consultation with national compilers of external debt and balance of payments statistics. The Guide updates the previous international guidelines on external debt statistics, External Debt: Definition, Statistical  Coverage and Methodology, published by four of our organizations in 1988. During the 1990s, new statistical guidelines for national accounts and balance of payments statistics were established, and a substantial growth in financial flows between private sector institutions occurred, including the use of debt instruments and financial derivatives to manage and redistribute risk.