This chapter reviews the main uses of Balance of Payments statistics within the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These statistics are collected for OECD countries and selected non-members to monitor short-term developments in global trade and investment. The current account and its components also help gauge external imbalances and are analysed at the country level in OECD Economic Surveys, or at the global level in the Economic Outlook. Balance of Payments statistics are also nowcast and provide inputs to nowcast other key indicators, such as measures of engagement in global value chains. They are fully incorporated in macroeconomic projections, whose global consistency they help to ensure. On the measurement side, Balance of Payments statistics serve several purposes, including being a building block of analytical databases (e.g. bilateral services trade) or providing elements to capture new statistical concepts such as digital trade.
