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Japan's Financial Structure -in View of the Flow of Funds Accounts

December 28, 2000
Bank of Japan
Research and Statistics Department

Click on ron0012a.pdf (378KB) to download the full text.

Introduction

The Flow of Funds Accounts (hereafter FFA) are comprehensive financial statistics that show the movements of funds among economic entities such as enterprises, households, and the government, and the claim/debt relationships between them. In July 1999, the Research and Statistics Department of the Bank of Japan conducted a fundamental revision on the FFA for the first time in nearly 40 years and started releasing the new data.1 The revised FFA reflects changes in financial and economic structure more precisely, provides statistics that are more convenient to use, offers greater consistency with national accounts, and makes international comparisons easier. Retroactively revised data for the past 10 fiscal years were also released in March 2000.

This paper will review the flow of funds in the Japanese economy in fiscal 1999 and will discuss the features of Japan's financial structure using the new FFA (data released in September 2000).

  1. See Guide to Japan's Flow of Funds Accounts (Research and Statistics Department, Bank of Japan, November 1999) and Compilation Method of the Flow of Funds Accounts (Research and Statistics Department, Bank of Japan, October 2000) for the new FFA.