errors and omissions

Errors and omissions is the balancing item in a country’s balance of payments. It records the net discrepancy between the measured entries in the current, capital and financial accounts when those accounts do not sum to zero, as they should in principle. The discrepancy may arise from incomplete coverage, timing differences, valuation problems, classification errors or other inaccuracies in the underlying data. A positive figure indicates that recorded inflows exceed recorded outflows after the other components have been compiled; a negative figure indicates the reverse. The item is statistical rather than an independent economic transaction, and a persistently large value may indicate weaknesses in the data or measurement procedures.