The goods or services that one country sells to another are called exports; the things that it buys from abroad are called imports. Imports need to be paid for with the money made from exports — the balance between the two is called the balance of payments. Not all countries can afford to pay for everything that they need, so they borrow money from wealthier countries and large banks. This has led in part to the large gap between the world’s richest and poorest countries. Many so-called “developing countries” need to use all the money they make from trade simply to repay the interest on loans.
Balance of Payment (BOP) is a statement which records all the monetary transactions made between residents of a country and the rest of the world during any given period. This statement includes all the transactions made by/to individuals, corporates and the government and helps in monitoring the flow of funds to develop the economy. When all the elements are correctly included in the BOP, it should sum up to zero in a perfect scenario. This means the inflows and outflows of funds should balance out. However, this does not ideally happen in most cases.
BOP statement of a country indicates whether the country has a surplus or a deficit of funds i.e. when a country’s export is more than its import, its BOP is said to be in surplus. On the other hand, BOP deficit indicates that a country’s imports are more than its exports. Tracking the transactions under BOP is something similar to the double entry system of accounting. This means, all the transaction will have a debit entry and a corresponding credit entry.