Foreign affiliates trade in services, in US$ billion, 2011

As foreign-controlled affiliates are resident in their host countries, their sales in these countries are not recorded in the BOP, as the latter only covers transactions between a country’s residents and non-residents. To bridge this gap, a new statistical framework, Foreign Affiliates Statistics (FATS) has been developed. These statistics cover the economic activities of enterprises producing goods and services, in which foreign investors own more than 50% of the voting power. They distinguish between incoming FATS, i.e. activities by foreign-controlled affiliates in the compiling country – and outgoing FATS, i.e. activities by foreign affiliates of the compiling country abroad. FATS are mainly available for OECD and a smaller number of non-OECD economies. As they constitute a new statistical concept, FATS may not always be fully comparable across countries as yet.