External Position of Banks - domestic institutes

The External position of banks (MFIs) shows the assets and liabilities of the banks in Germany vis-à-vis non-residents on a monthly basis. It comprises the assets and liabilities of German banks vis-à-vis foreign banks, enterprises, households and governments. The microdatabase contains further breakdowns of assets by recipient country as well as by type and maturity of investment. These data serve the purpose of observing German banks’ activities worldwide and are an important source of input when calculating both monetary and balance of payment statistics aggregates. They also contribute to the German submissions to the International Banking Statistics of the BIS. With regard to definition and valuation of the collected positions, internationally agreed concepts such as the currently valid 6th edition of the International Monetary Fund’s Balance of Payments Manual (BPM6), the Regulations on national accounts agreed at UN level (SNA 2008) as well as the European System of Accounts (ESVG 2010), which is binding for all members of the European Union, are taken into account. Each line in the dataset corresponds to a report of positions of a monetary financial institution vis-à-vis a certain country in a certain month in a certain original currency.