Guidance Notes to the Regulation ECB/2001/13 on the MFI balance sheet statistics

The European Central Bank has today published the "Guidance Notes to the Regulation ECB/2001/13 on the MFI balance sheet statistics".

The Regulation ECB/2001/13 concerning the consolidated balance sheet of the monetary financial institutions ("the ECB Regulation") will enter into force in January 2003 and replace Regulation ECB/1998/16. The "Guidance Notes to the Regulation ECB/2001/13 on the MFI balance sheet statistics" ("the Guidance Notes") do not establish a new legal requirement. Instead, by providing a range of more elaborated explanations and examples, the Guidance Notes aim at promoting a consistent implementation of the statistical requirements in national statistical collection systems and compilation procedures.

A further important objective of these Guidance Notes is to provide a set of recommendations on the preferred statistical practices in respect of the accounting and netting rules. The implementation of these recommendations is intended to help minimise, to the extent possible, the impact of differences in the accounting and netting rules in the aggregated balance sheet data and thereby to improve the overall homogeneity of the euro area aggregates.

This publication is available on the ECB's website (http://www.ecb.europa.eu). Hard copies may be ordered in writing from the ECB.