5342.0 - Balance of Payments Statistics, Information Paper on Quality , 1996  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 20/02/1996   
   Page tools: Print Print Page Print all pages in this productPrint All  

3.7. The sign convention used in the revisions statistics presented in this paper is not the same as that used in published balance of payments tables. In published balance of payments tables, debit entries are normally shown as negative values. In the statistics presented here, values for gross credit and debit entries are shown in absolute terms, and negative values are recorded only for net balances (e.g. the balance on merchandise trade) and for revisions. A negative revision to a gross credit or debit item means that the absolute measure of that item has declined, while a negative revision to a net balance means that a surplus has decreased or a deficit increased. For example, in the case of the balance on current account (which has been in deficit for all periods covered in these analyses) a negative revision indicates that the revised value is a larger deficit than the earlier estimate.






Previous PageNext Page