Current Account Balance
Get the Current Account Balance for a variety of countries over time from the Global Macro Database (GMDB). The Current Account Balance is the sum of the balance of trade (exports minus imports of goods and services), net factor income (such as interest and dividends) and net transfer payments (such as foreign aid).
The balance is annual and expressed in millions of national currency, with a negative value marking a current account deficit and a positive value a surplus.
Data comes from the Global Macro Database (GMDB), further information about the variable can be found within https://www.globalmacrodata.com/documentation.html
Also known as: current account, trade balance, balance of payments.
Current Account Balance in Python or via the MCP
Install the Finance Toolkit with:
pip install financetoolkit -U
Then call get_current_account_balance as shown below.
from financetoolkit import Economics
economics = Economics(start_date='2015-01-01', end_date="2025-12-31")
economics.get_current_account_balance(countries=['France', 'Germany', 'Italy'])
Or, after setting up the Finance Toolkit MCP, ask:
How large were the current account balances of France, Germany and Italy, in national currency, from 2015 to 2025?
Which returns:
| France | Germany | Italy | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | -7158 | 252800 | 20667.3 |
| 2016 | -11787 | 285460 | 41949.2 |
| 2017 | -12529 | 272550 | 42551.2 |
| 2018 | -16441 | 296480 | 44465.2 |
| 2019 | 14533 | 288300 | 56955.4 |
| 2020 | -47596 | 217260 | 62807 |
| 2021 | 6941 | 256470 | 36974.5 |
| 2022 | -37663 | 164120 | -36550.2 |
| 2023 | -29398 | 233650 | 5323.05 |
| 2024 | 2665 | 253790 | 24121.3 |
| 2025 | -9345 | 201850 | 25049.5 |
Parameters
get_current_account_balance accepts the following parameters.
| Parameter | Type | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
countries | list[str] | str | None | A list of countries or a single country to include in the results. Defaults to None. | ["United States", "Germany"] |
usd | bool | Whether to return the values in millions of US dollars, converted by the Global Macro Database, instead of millions of national currency, which makes levels comparable across countries. Defaults to False. | True |
rolling | int | The rolling window size to use for smoothing the data (simple moving average). Defaults to None. | 4 |
trailing | int | The trailing window size to use for summing the data over trailing periods (e.g. a trailing-4-quarter sum). Defaults to None. | 4 |
growth | bool | Whether to return the growth data or the actual data. Defaults to False. | True |
lag | int | The number of periods to lag the growth data. Defaults to 1. | 4 |
standardize | bool | Whether to standardize (Z-Score) the result. When combined with growth=True, standardizes the growth values instead of the raw values. Defaults to False. | True |
rounding | int | None | The number of decimals to round the results to. Defaults to None. | 2 |
gmdb_forecasts | bool | Whether to include the years the Global Macro Database projects, from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, up to five years ahead. Only applies to data from the Global Macro Database. Defaults to False, which ends a series with its last observation. | True |