Balance of payments and other external statistics

These statistics provide a wide range of information and data on the monthly and quarterly balance of payments (b.o.p.) and quarterly international investment position (i.i.p.) of the euro area.

The data are broken down by type of investment, resident sector, type of instrument and country of residency of the counterpart.

You can find information regarding:

• Balance of payments and international investment position
• data on international reserves and foreign currency liquidity
• external debt statistics, broken down by resident sector and type of instrument
• external trade in goods, broken down by product group and main trading partners
• the effective exchange rates (EERs) of the euro.
• the harmonised competitiveness indicators (HCIs) for euro area countries.

The ECB uses the euro area b.o.p. and i.i.p. as analytical tools in the context of its monetary policy mandate.

In general, they can be used to show the interaction of an individual economy with the rest of the world. For example, financial transactions and positions are used to analyse the euro area’s financial integration and its financial interdependency with other partners.

The purpose of the HCIs is to provide consistent and comparable measures of euro area countries' price and cost competitiveness that are also consistent with the EERs of the euro.