International standards and the DRS Manual Guidelines

Standards for defining external debt and compiling external debt statistics followed by international organizations are laid out in External Debt: Definitions, Statistical coverage, and Methodology (OECD, 1988), issued as a result of the work of the International working Group on External Debt Statistics. This working group was launched in 1984 in an attempt to avoid any unnecessary discrepancies between debt reported by the IMF, the BIS, the OECD, and the World Bank. The collaboration continued and a second publication was completed in 1994; Debt Stocks, Debt Flows and the Balance of Payments (OECD, 1994).

Furthermore, details about the Bank's debtor reporting system are providedinThe World Bank's Debtor Reporting System Manual (World Bank, 1989). This manual defines the data elements to be included in the DRS reports, and is basically an introduction about how to fill in the questionnaires and respond to the Debtor Reporting System.