Summarizes the flow of all goods, services, income, and transfer payments to and from the UK .  The report acts as a gauge for how the UK economy interacts with the rest of the world. CA tracks the trade balance (exports and imports for goods and services), income payments (such as interest, dividends and salaries) and unilateral transfers (aid, taxes, and one-way gifts). Current account is one of the three components (Financial Account, Capital Account and Current Account) that make up a country's Balance of Payments, the detailed accounting of all international interactions. Where the other side of the Balance of Payments, Capital and Financial Accounts deal mainly with financial assets and investments, the Current Account gives a detailed breakdown of how the country intermingles with rest of the global economy on a routine, non-investment basis.

A positive value (current account surplus) records that the flow of capital from these sources into the UK exceeds capital from these sources coming to the country.  A negative value (current account deficit) means that there is a net capital outflow from these sources. Persistent Current Account deficits may lead to a natural depreciation of a currency, as trade, income and transfer payments usually reflect Pound Sterling leaving the country to make payments in a foreign currency (just as underlying surpluses act as an appreciating weight).

There are a number of factors that often work to diminish the impact of the Current Account release on the market. The report is not very timely, released quarterly several weeks after the reporting period. Many of the components that lead to the final Current Account such as production and trade figures are known well in advance. Lastly, since the report reflect data for a specific reporting quarter, any significant developments in the Current Account should plausibly have been felt during that quarter and not during the release of data.

But just like GDP and Trade Balance, Current Account is central to forecasting long term developments in foreign exchange rates. It gives a detailed picture of how the British economy interacts internationally, breaking down these exchanges into separate components that can be tracked and often anticipated. Thus the weight of CA's importance has lead it historically to be one of the more important reports out of the United Kingdom .

The headline number is the Current Account balance and the percentage change in the Current Account from the previous quarter, and the value of the CA in Pounds.

Relevance: Tends to move markets on release
Release schedule : 8:30 (GMT); quarterly, in the end of the final month following the reference quarter
Revisions schedule : frequent revisions reflecting changes to merchandise trade and other transactions
Source of report : Office for National Statistics
Web Address : http://www.statistics.gov.uk/
Address of release : http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Product.asp?vlnk=1118