CROSS-BORDER HOLDINGS INCREASED 7.7 % IN 2010
By Omoh Gabriel
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said that cross-border holdings of securities amounted to $40.3 trillion as at the end of December 2010.
The released results from its 2010 annual Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS), the only global survey of portfolio investment holdings covering positions in equity and debt securities as of end-2010 for 73 CPIS-participating economies, are published in a new online database that leverages current technologies for data and metadata dissemination.
According to the IMF, at the end of 2010, cross-border holdings of securities reported in the CPIS amounted to $40.3 trillion, representing an increase of 7.7 per cent in the value of holdings from the end-2009 level. Global holdings declined by 21.4 per cent in 2008 as a consequence of the global financial crisis, and increased 21 per cent in 2009.
The CPIS presents data on a detailed from-whom-to-whom basis. For example, it reveals each CPIS participant's holdings of long-term debt securities, short-term debt securities, and equity securities cross-classified by every other individual economy in the world.
The new database is available at http://cpis.imf.org and through IMF eLibrary Data. Usability has been enhanced with dynamic data selection and display features, and allows for faster user access to data reports. Information on individual economy compilation practices (metadata) are also presented with similar features.
Along with the launch of the improved database, the CPIS website has been redesigned and offers enhanced navigation features, in line with other specialised IMF databases, including the Coordinated Direct Investment Survey, Financial Soundness Indicators and the Financial Access Survey.
The coverage of the CPIS is augmented with information from two other surveys, namely: Securities held as Foreign Exchange Reserves and Securities held by International Organisations (these data sets are disseminated at an aggregate level only, as the data are reported on a confidential basis).