BEA will begin publishing on June 26 new quarterly detail for the U.S. international investment position (IIP), a statistical balance sheet that presents the dollar value of U.S. financial assets and liabilities with respect to other countries at the end of each quarter and year. The IIP statistics are published in BEA news releases and interactive data tables in March, June, September, and December.
Period-to-period changes in the IIP result from financial transactions and “other changes,” including price, exchange-rate, and other changes in volume and valuation. Historically, for quarterly statistics, BEA has published financial transactions and the aggregate “other changes” for direct investment, portfolio investment, and other investment such as loans and deposits. With the next IIP news release on June 26, BEA will publish, for the first time, the quarterly breakdown of “other changes” into its three components for both assets and liabilities. For annual statistics, BEA currently publishes financial transactions and the three components of “other changes” in March, with updates in June.
The new quarterly statistics will provide a more comprehensive and timely understanding of the United States’ financial interconnectedness with the rest of the world. Data from BEA’s IIP Accounts are used by the Federal Reserve Board to compile national balance sheet statistics in the Financial Accounts of the United States. The data are also of interest to policymakers, researchers, international organizations, or anyone who studies international economics and finance.
The annual statistics are currently in BEA’s interactive data tables as IIP Table 1.3. Change in the Yearend U.S. Net International Investment Position. On June 26, table 1.3 will be renamed “Change in the U.S. Net International Investment Position” and will present both quarterly and annual data. A prototype of the new table is available in BEA’s interactive data tables and in the Data Application Programming Interface, or API.
The expansion of the IIP statistics reflects BEA’s incorporation of newly available source data from the U.S. Treasury Department’s Treasury International Capital System Long-term Securities, or TIC SLT.
For more information, see the preview article in the Survey of Current Business