Balance of Payments
The Balance of Payments surveys consist of several surveys which are as follows:
The survey results are supplemented with other internal CSO data (e.g. merchandise exports/imports and tourism statistics) as well as administrative data from public sources (such as the Central Bank of Ireland, the National Treasury Management Agency, government departments) and other miscellaneous data. Financial data in respect of credit unions, investment funds, insurance companies, FVCs and SPVs are collected and shared by the Central Bank of Ireland.
The balance of payments (BOP) is a statistical statement that summarises, for a specific period, the economic transactions of the residents of an economy with the rest of the world. It consists of the goods and services account, the primary income account, the secondary income account (combined these comprise the current account), the capital account and the financial account.
The international investment position (IIP) is a point-in-time statistical statement of the value and composition of the stock of an economy’s foreign financial assets, or the economy’s claims on the rest of the world, and the value and composition of the stock of an economy’s financial liabilities (or obligations) to the rest of the world.
Data collection is statutory and data providers are required to supply information under the Statistics (Balance of Payments Survey) Order 2020 (Statutory Instrument S.I. No. 91 of 2020) made under the Statistics Act of 1993 and Regulation (EC) No 184 of 2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 January 2005 concerning balance of payments statistics.
The Statistics (Balance of Payments Survey) Order 2020 (Statutory Instrument S.I. No. 91 of 2020) made under the Statistics Act of 1993 is the primary legal basis for collecting the required data from providers. This order specifies who may be surveyed, the frequency with which they may be surveyed and the nature of the data that may collected. In addition, the European Communities (Statistics) Regulations, 1999 were introduced in June 1999 to allow the CSO to meet obligations under Council Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 of 23 November 1998 (as amended by council regulations (EC) Nos. 951/2009 of 9 October 2009 and by council regulation (EU) 2015/373 of 5 March 2015) concerning the statistical requirements of the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB has a statutory basis - ECB Guideline ECB/2004/15 of 16 July 2004, as amended by Guideline ECB2007/3 of 31 May 2007, recast in Guideline ECB/2011/23 of 9 December2011, as amended by ECB Guideline ECB/2013/25 of 30 July 2013 and EU Guideline 2016/231 of 26 November 2015 - for the compilation and supply of the BOP and related data it requires. Related to this, its formal instrument - ECB Recommendation ECB/2004/16 of 22 July 2004, as amended by ECB Recommendation ECB/2007/4 of 31 May 2007– applies to the CSO. Also, Regulation (EC) No 184/2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 January 2005, as amended by Regulations 601 and 602/2006 of 18 April 2006, 1137/2008 of 22 October 2008, 707/2009 of 5 August 2009, 555/2012 of 22 June 2012 and 2016/1013 of 8 June 2016 specifies the EU Commission (Eurostat) requirements concerning Balance of Payments, international trade in services and foreign direct investment statistics.
National users: The CSO, Department of Finance and other Government Departments such as the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, the Central Bank of Ireland, economic commentators, the media, third-level educational institutions, the public at large.
International users: Eurostat, ECB, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, the United Nations.
Our results are made available to the public in aggregate form and are published nationally in statistical-release form on a quarterly and annual basis as follows:
The results are also available on CSO’s website as follows: https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/internationalaccounts/internationalaccounts/ and on the CSO’s dissemination database system, PxStat.
Various results tables are also supplied to the EU Commission (Eurostat) and to the ECB as statutorily required. In addition, a variety of tables are supplied to the IMF and to the OECD.
Yes. All information supplied to the CSO is treated as confidential. The Statistics Act, 1993 sets stringent confidentiality standards: Information collected may be used only for statistical purposes, and no personal data related to an identifiable person or business undertaking may be divulged to any other government department or body.
Aggregated statistical results which are published nationally may include analytical statistical elements which are statistically confidential, and which therefore have to be suppressed. Such confidential data can arise where there are small number of contributors (enterprises) to a particular piece of information or in other cases where one or two contributors are very dominant. The information is suppressed in a way that renders it undisclosed either directly or indirectly by derivation.
In supplying aggregated statistical information to Eurostat and the ECB certain elements of the information may be confidential. The European legislation referred to above obliges EU member countries to provide this information so that the two organisations can compile EU and Euro-area aggregate BOP and IIP statistics. Both organisations are obliged to protect the confidentiality of data under the above legislation.
In addition to the data collected directly from survey respondents CSO will also make use of administrative data provided to the CSO by the Revenue Commissioners (Gross Annual Pay, PRSI class, PRSI-credited weeks in employment).
The CSO uses Bureau van Dijk's FAME company database for data validation and register validation purposes. Processing is limited to personal data of shareholders and single-member companies within this database, which also contains personal data of company directors and company secretaries. Relevant information extracted includes the name, country of residence and shareholding percentage of shareholders and the name and address of single-member companies.
Brendan O’Dowd, Balance of Payments, Central Statistics Office, Ardee Road, Dublin D06 FX52.
E-mail: brendan.odowd@cso.ie
Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights:
However, because your data is processed for statistical purposes these rights may be limited in accordance with Article 89 of the GDPR. This is due to the fact that the exercise of any of these rights may render impossible, or seriously impair, the achievement of the statistical processing and such restriction maybe necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.