Reporting balance of payments data (BoP reporting)

Did you receive an administrative decision from Statistics Norway regarding your duty to provide information for the official survey entitled Reporting balance of payments data (RA-0532)? This web page provides you with information on how to answer the survey.

What information must be reported?

The reporting asks for balance sheet and income statement items to and from Norway. In the annual reporting, the amounts should be broken down by country and currency where this is specified in the form. By stating all voluntary specifications in the report for the 4th quarter, the firm can be exempt from the annual report. See more information in the Altinn form.

In order to produce statistics on balance of payments and other external account statistics we need information on the enterprise’s foreign economic relations:

Income statement items – financial income, expenses and allocations:

• Received/paid dividends

Intra and non-intra group companies interest income and interest expenses balance sheet items:

• Assets, short and long term, intra-group and non-intra group company’s items
• Liabilities; short- and long-term, intra-group and non-intra group company’s items
• Equity, if the company is partly or wholly owned from abroad

For more information, see the attached documents in the column at the right.

Your answers are essential

The survey’s aim is to collect financial balance sheet and income statement data to and from Norway. The survey is an important input to the following statistics: Balance of payments, international investment position, direct investment, portfolio investments and the foreign sector in the national accounts. The information is also used to ascertain gross national income and as a variable in macroeconomic models.

Who needs to complete the survey?

Statistics Norway collects information from a sample of enterprises. The sample is mainly drawn from the Register of Legal Entities, Statistics Norway’s register of all Norwegian-registered legal entities in both the private and public sector.

If the enterprise has changed its name, type of activity, or address, this must be reported using the Coordinated register notification. More information on this is available at www.brreg.no/home. The survey must still be answered if there has been no activity in the enterprise during the period to be reported.

How to submit the survey

The information is to be reported electronically via Altinn. For more information, see ‘How to answer surveys in Altinn on behalf of an enterprise’, located under DOCUMENTS in the column at the right. If you wish to submit data as a semicolon separated file instead of using the form in Altinn, please send a request to utund@ssb.no

Only those who have been assigned the relevant role can answer surveys on behalf of the enterprise in Altinn. To fill out this form, you need to have one of the following roles:

• accounting employee
• responsible auditor
• accountant without signing rights
• accountant with signing rights

If you do not have one of the roles above, senior management can delegate this role on behalf of the enterprise.

Data can also be reported on attachments via Altinn. Enterprises who would prefer this solution should contact the foreign economy response service utund@ssb.no

If you have problems with login or roles, contact Altinn on +47 75 00 60 00, or find more information at www.altinn.no/en

In the right margin, you will find guidance on how to fill in the form in Altinn, and how to design a semicolon separated file. Some of the documents are only available in Norwegian at the Norwegian page https://www.ssb.no/innrapportering/naeringsliv/utund-aar-mnd-kvartal

The duty to report

The Statistics Act gives Statistics Norway the authority to collect the information, and to impose a compulsory fine to any enterprise failing to report within the deadline. For more information, see:

• The duty to provide information, and the right to collect information: Statistics Act, Section 2-2
• The right to impose a compulsory fine: Statistics Act, Section 2-3
• The right to enforce the collection of a fine and demand payment for costs: Tax Administration Act
• The right to appeal an administrative decision: Public Administration Act, Chapter VI

The submission deadline is specified in the Altinn inbox.