Lhe aim of balance of payments statistics is to report on all the economic relations between a country and foreign countries. They describe, on the one hand, “current transactions”, i.e. the exchange of goods and services, as well as income received or paid abroad and, on the other hand, financial flows outside the country which constitute the financial counterpart of these current transactions. But, behind the apparent stability of statistical definitions, the purposes and uses of the balance of payments have varied greatly.
This statistic was officially established in France in the aftermath of the Second World War, as in all member countries of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 1945, it was entrusted to the Foreign Exchange Office, which depended on the Ministry of Finance, responsible for closely controlling the inflow and outflow of foreign currencies. The statistics are produced from information transmitted to the Office by the banks, which are the only ones authorized to carry out financial transactions with foreign countries. Indeed, to rebuild the country destroyed by the war, France imports more than it exports and finds itself in a recurring way in a situation of deficit. To pay for its purchases, the country needs more foreign currency than it receives from its sales. The “balance of payments crisis” of 1956-1957 was a major economic crisis, the result of many years of deficits, and forced France to call on foreign creditors, particularly Americans.
The end of the convertibility of the dollar into gold (1971) then the oil crisis of 1973 profoundly changed the situation. The objective of exchange control becomes less central. The production of the balance of payments, entrusted since 1960 to the Banque de France following the abolition of the Office, changed in nature. It is no longer a matter of strictly checking the country’s currency inflows and outflows, but of measuring France’s participation in the development of international trade. France exports many services abroad, such as major construction contracts, technological or financial services. Large French companies, particularly in the automobile industry, are multiplying subsidiaries outside the country, which generates both imports and exports of goods and services, but also financial income. From the 1980s, the balance was no longer calculated from bank transactions alone, but increasingly from information transmitted by the companies themselves to the Banque de France.
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