Talk:List of sovereign states by current account balance

Data doesn't agree with CIA Factbook?
Over at the CIA World Factbook it says the US CA deficit is -$473.4bn and the UK is -$46.47bn, which are not even close to the numbers here (-$599.9bn and -$66.6bn respectively). What is going on? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.150.212.6 (talk) 11:56, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Iraq, Budget Surplus?
Title says it all —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomjc (talk • contribs) 05:29, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Oil and gas exports, coupled with the fact that domestically it is extremely self sufficient, it doesn't rely as heavily as other nations on imports, it produces what it lacks by and large. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.194.21.39 (talk) 19:59, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

Australia
I believe Australia is currently in surplus, with no debt. I don't completely understand this list and how it works, but I do know that Australia eliminated all of its debt last year. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.189.1.252 (talk) 12:55, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Australia has a trade deficit. This and other factors are taken into account in calculating national account balance. QuinnHK 15:59, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Current account balance as percentage of GNP
Does anyone think that current account balance as a percentage of GDP would be a relevant extra column (and possibly a more useful one to sort the table by)? --Alex Whittaker 16:00, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Well there is list of countries by public debt, which is similar to what you are suggesting.—Tokek 11:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

A table that shows current account balance as a percentage of GDP is actually more relevant than the table here which simply ranks by the gross value of the balance. Someone needs to put it together!
 * I think that current account balance divided by population would be more relevant and interesting. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.74.96.70 (talk) 22:10, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No, percentage of GDP is more informative and relevant. If we have two countries with equal populations but one is wealthy and the other is poor they might happen to have the same current-account deficit in dollar terms but it would be far more of an problem in the poor country. The rich country might export for $100 billion and import for $110 billion thus having a deficit of $10 billion (there are more factors involved but I'm keeping this simple), the poor country might export for $20 billion and import for $30 billion and thus have the same balance of $10 billion. Proportionally the poor country has a far higher deficit. --Bjarki (talk) 19:01, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Rename?
Renaming the article title from List of countries and territories by current account balance to List of countries by current account balance was a good move, IMHO. However, I think we can already assume that unless otherwise mentioned, that we are talking about current information, just like all the other list of countries lists, and hence it would be bettter to shorten the title even more to simply List of countries by account balance. Do others agree or disagree? —Tokek 11:41, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Is this page...
Are the numbers in the table in billions or millions or something? These numbers seem awfully low and specific, like Haiti having $34...  Viva  La   V  i  e   Boheme! 


 * Their in millions, as in Haiti having $34,000,000 -85.154.28.186 16:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Burma is supposedly having a 1 something billion surplus, yet on the map, she has a deficit.... Uthantofburma (talk) 07:22, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Updated It
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html

Semiprotected, 20 September 2007
Page has been dugg, semiprotecting to prevent anonymous vandalism. Sorry guys. ~Kylu ( u | t )  02:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for that! Mad Gouki 06:38, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Debt vs. deficit
Shouldn't the last word of the intro be "debt," since we're talking about amounts, instead of "deficit" which I think would be for the rate of spending instead? skeeJay 13:01, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
 * No, we're talking about ratios here, not totals. QuinnHK 16:00, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Morocco
The list and map are contradictory in Morocco's case. In the map Morocco's shown in red, while in the list the amount is positive.

Original Source
I understand that the CIA have more access to this kinda of information than we do, however, what I am interested in knowing is where they are gathering this information from. Information to cross reference any of the figures would not only give the figures better citation, but also some kind of context to begin to understand what these figures actually mean and how they are calculated. --Hm2k (talk) 22:09, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

what exactly is going on?
Article is a bit too vague. Should be completely revised. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.119.185.104 (talk) 18:49, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Canada/US
someone recently altered these two countries, i have fixed this, but he had the bright idea to claim Canada's deficit was the largest in the world (1,729, 601, while the US had 1, 729, 600) although when he did, he added the number 165 instead of relabelling them all and simply deleted number 14 where Canada was placed just days ago (so that the list skipped from 13 to 15). there are only 164 countries measured, so if anyone wants to bash Canada, at least try and make it convincing. for all those who prefer facts, Canada's surplus is 28 400 (28 billion 400 million), the US's dismal deficit is 12 987 100 (twelve trillion, 987 billion, 100 million

--

Wasn't sure where to put this, but it looked like someone altered the US again. I double check the CIA link and corrected it. This data will only change once a year, when the CAI Fact Book updates. I think that pages like this should be locked until their source is updated, then they can be unlocked for the once-a-year update.

- lyceum —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.62.14.170 (talk) 19:24, 29 December 2008 (UTC)

Account balance != National Debt
We've seen this error before. The current account balance does not equal the national debt of a country. It's two separate numbers. I'm going to fix this with the number from the CIA Factbook, then add a see also to the list of national debts. Chadlupkes (talk) 03:06, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

New Discussion
A discussion has been started at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Countries/Lists of countries which could affect the inclusion criteria and title of this and other lists of countries. Editors are invited to participate. Pfainuk talk 11:23, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Updated Data
The updated data from the 2009 Reports (showing 2008 CABs) is available at the IMF Website. Whilst I'm able to get the data, is there a tool to convert it to Wiki format, and to append the country flag/link in place of the name (or someone with the knowhow to make one, or a lot of time and patience... ;) )

The images seem easier to do - there's a link to a handy tool to create them on the image pages.

Same goes for the % of GDP page, naturally.

--Danny252 (talk) 22:43, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

CAPITAL account balance
It would be great to have a similar list but for the capital account balance. I guess this would require a new article. Could anybody do it? (M.efimov (talk) 13:40, 9 September 2010 (UTC))

Democratic Republic of the Congo
The Democratic Republic of the Congo is mentioned twice, with different values for the same year 2010 - rank 121 and 149. Rémi Castérès (talk) 14:56, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Well spotted. One of them is obviously supposed to be the Republic of the Congo, which was absent from the list. I've changed n°121 from the RDC to the ROC, on the basis that the ROC is ranked higher in the latest figures. If anyone still has the original figures though, that would help. Aridd (talk) 12:50, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress which affects this page. Please participate at Talk:Lists of countries and territories - Requested move and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RM bot 18:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

Merger Proposal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_current_account_balance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_exports

List of Sovereign States by Current Account Balance, has the same content as List of Countries by Net Exports. Both seem to draw the same data from the same source, WTO and CIA but this page seems to be drawn from more recent data. Also of note, both articles are linked in the template List of Countries by Financial Rankings. I don't feel this is a controversial merger but would need someone else to make the actual merger [I am alsop unable to do templates because of ineptitude]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Parhe (talk • contribs) 15:40, 15 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Support, since they appear to be nearly identical  - Bataaf van Oranje (talk) 13:41, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion: account balance deficit in negative numbers
Right now, the largest surplus and the largest deficits are both in positive numbers. You might think that's ok, since the table clearly indicates which is which. But at the bottom, there is the "account balance" of the Euro Area. Is it a deficit or a surplus? Impossible to tell. Ratfox (talk) 14:59, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah that definitely needs to be clarified. Bataaf van Oranje (Prinsgezinde) (talk) 20:29, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

SINGAPORE
Totally fake numbers in this page

See http://atlas.media.mit.edu/it/profile/country/sgp/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.55.251.231 (talk) 15:08, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Conflicting Data
India is in both the top and bottom countries by Current Account Balance. Problem is that two different sources are used. Should only use one source. The most updated of the primary source used is: https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/current-account-balance/country-comparison — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.193.13.232 (talk) 18:33, 13 April 2021 (UTC)

Dead CIA World Factbook link
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html

is a dead link Xmtiaz (talk) 11:36, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism abounds
Multiple data points in this article have been altered by idiots over the months. The tables need to be completely nuked to fix this mess. 16AdityaG09 (talk) 10:13, 17 September 2021 (UTC)