World Trade Organization (WTO) is the organisation that organised the first eight rounds of trade liberalisation was called GATT – the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, and in the Uruguay Round a new organisation was formed to organise trade between countries and oversee the negotiations.
The balance of payments accounts measure the international trade performance of an economy and show how well it is managing to match imports and exports of goods and services and the flows of investment in and out of the country.
The current account records imports and exports of goods (sometimes known as the ‘balance of trade’ or ‘visible trade’) and imports and exports of services (sometimes known as ‘invisible trade’). It often also records income flows (flows of interest, profits and dividends that may have arisen from investment flows) and transfers of money.
The capital account of the balance of payments records the flows of money into and out of a country for investment and other purposes.
