Portfolio investment abroad

Portfolio investment

Financial investment where the investors have no intention to establish a long-term financial link. In practice, an investment is categorized as portfolio investment when the ownership interest is less than 20 per cent.

Market value

The actual price of a financial instrument agreed upon by the involved parties.

The international standards SNA2008 and ESA2010 are used for the classification of securities and institutional sectors. IMF Balance of Payments Manual for the definition of portfolio investment. From 2012 the staticis follows the manuals BPM6 and ESA2010. Standard ISO 3166 is used for country classification. For more information of sectors, please see ssb.no.

Name: Portfolio investment abroad
Topic: External economy

Division for Financial Accounts

Only at national level.

Annual.The statistics is published in June on SSB.no and on the IMF data page.

Data are reported to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Not relevant

The statistics is part of the IMF Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS), which Norway participate in. The first CPIS was conducted for the year 1997 and from 2001 the survey has been annual. Data are published in the Statbank from 2004 at SSB.no. Portfolio investment is defined as ownership of foreign equities, debt securities (bonds and notes) with the purpose to gain income and not to obtain a lasting interest in or control of the issuer of the security. 

The main user is the IMF.

No external users have access to the statistics and analyses before they are published and accessible simultaneously for all users on ssb.no at 8 am. Prior to this, a minimum of three months' advance notice is given in the Statistics Release Calendar.

The portofolio statistics is consistent with the function "portfolio investment" presented in the statistics on foreign assets and liabilities. Revision cycle may cause small differences between the statistics.

The statistics is derived from various primary statistics (see below) with corresponding legal acts. The most important acts are The Statistics Act §2-2 and §3-2, The Act on Supervision of Credit Institutions, Insurance Companies and Security Trading and The Act relating to Norges Bank and the Monetary System etc., section 27.

Not relevant.

The statistics comprises of, in principle, all resident enterprises, institutions and households who are owners of securities issued by nonresidents. Securities are restricted to shares and other equities (included shares in mutual funds), bonds and notes. This means that e.g. financial derivatives are excluded from the statistics. Securities held by Norges Bank (Central Bank of Norway) as reserve assets are not defined as portfolio investment.

The most important data sources are annual balance sheet statistics for Norges Bank (included the investment of the Government Pension Fund), banks, other credit institutions, financial holding companies, mutual funds, insurance companies and pension funds and the annual survey for non-financial enterprises and some financial enterprises (which are not under supervision). Additionally we have register data for foreign securities held in resident custody.

The annual balance sheet statistics for financial enterprises that are under supervision count all units except the pension funds statistics, which is based on a sample survey with a high coverage. The data for non-financial enterprises are based on a sample surveys with high coverage of the populations.

Statistics Norway collects data for the non-financial enterprises, financial enterprises that are not under supervision, insurance companies and pension funds. Norges Bank (The Central Bank of Norway) is responsible for the data collection for the financial enterprises which are under supervision by The Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway including among other the Government Pension Fund. Foreign securities held in resident custody is registerdata made available for Statistics Norway.

Total portfolio investment is checked to be consistent with portfolio investment data in the foreign assets and liabilities statistics (also known as international investment position (IIP) statistics). For equities there is also a controll of wether the distinction between portfolio investment and direct investment is correct. The breakdown by country is checked versus other data sources (for instance the annuale enterprise reports) when possible.

The high survey coverage of the population makes it unnecessary to scale up the data by the use of statistical methods to estimate total portfolio investment.

Not relevant

Data are not released if there are less than three units in a cell in the tables and hence there is a possibility to identify the investor.

The statistics for the year 2001 and onwards are in general comparable over time but the data sources for non-financial enterprises where changed in 2004 due to a new balance of payment data collection system (survey).

There may be errors in the data sources caused by:

*errors when data are extracted from primary data sources and reportet to SSB

* the reporters use different principles for accounting and valuation

*incomplete reports or too late reporting to SSB.

All important investors are included, but non-response and omission of small enterprises, may have an impact on the breakdown by country.

No importance at total level but sampling errors may have an impact on the breakdown by country.

The breakdown by country may partly be based on the country where the security was issued rather than the country where the issuer is resident.

Not relevant