Data Revisions of the Flow of Funds Accounts

March 23, 2010
Bank of Japan
Research and Statistics Department

The Bank of Japan releases retroactively revised figures of the Flow of Funds Accounts (hereafter the FFA) every March, which reflect update information on source data, the financial system, and any legislations. Today, the Bank retroactively re-posted fiscal year and quarterly data from the second quarter of 2000 in the "BOJ Time-Series Data Search."

The main points of this data revision are the followings, on which data users have shown keen interest.

(1) Assets and liabilities of the household sector

The increase in foreign exchange margin transactions in the Household sector was reflected in the FFA. The margin deposited at financial instruments firms and value gains and losses of open positions in foreign exchange margin transactions are included in the amount outstanding of assets and liabilities of the Household sector.

The estimation of the amount outstanding of local government securities held by the Household sector was improved by replacing the source data with the amount outstanding of Residential Local Government Bonds.

(2) Assets and liabilities of the central government

Value gains and losses of interest rate swap transactions, which were introduced by the central government in 2006, are included in assets and liabilities of the Central Government sector.

(3) Amount outstanding of securitization products

Asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP), a kind of securitization product, had been overestimated in a part of the "structured-financing instruments" in the FFA. New source data were adopted to estimate the market size with more accuracy.

Data on the loans, which are initially provided and then securitized by the Fiscal Loan Fund, were relocated between transaction items.

(4) Lease transactions

The Accounting Standard for Lease Transactions was revised in Japan. The new accounting standard, in principle, requires lessors to treat finance lease transactions, including those transactions that do not transfer ownership, in a similar manner with ordinary sale and purchase transactions. In the FFA,"investment in leased assets" is recorded as"installment credit (not included in consumer credit)," a part of financial assets. For its compilation, balance sheets of lessors are utilized as source data.

(5) Release of the aggregate of transaction items

Data on the aggregate of each transaction item have been already available in press releases since December 2009. The data are now also available in the "BOJ Time-Series Data Search."