What is The Balance Of Payments?

Welcome to the Investors Trading Academy talking glossary of financial terms and events.
Our word of the day is “Balance Of Payment”
The balance of payments, also known as balance of international payments, encompasses all transactions between a country's residents and its nonresidents involving goods, services and income; financial claims on and liabilities to the rest of the world; and transfers such as gifts.
The BOP is divided into three main categories: the current account, the capital account and the financial account. Within these three categories are sub-divisions, each of which accounts for a different type of international monetary transaction.

The current account is used to mark the inflow and outflow of goods and services into a country. Earnings on investments, both public and private, are also put into the current account.
Within the current account are credits and debits on the trade of merchandise, which includes goods such as raw materials and manufactured goods that are bought, sold or given away or possibly in the form of aid. Services refer to receipts from tourism, transportation (like the levy that must be paid in Egypt when a ship passes through the Suez Canal), engineering, business service fees (from lawyers or management consulting, for example) and royalties from patents and copyrights. When combined, goods and services together make up a country's balance of trade. The BOT is typically the biggest bulk of a country's balance of payments as it makes up total imports and exports. If a country has a balance of trade deficit, it imports more than it exports, and if it has a balance of trade surplus, it exports more than it imports.

By Barry Norman, Investors Trading Academy