Transcript Briefing on the work of the Inter-agency Group on Economic and

Briefing on the work of the Inter-agency Group on
Economic and Financial Statistics
Future organisation of the data flow
among national and international agencies
Werner Bier
Deputy Director-General Statistics
European Central Bank
United Nations Statistical Commission 2012 Side Event
New York, 29 February 2012
Overview
• Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination
• Status quo of official statistics – achievements
and challenges
• Harmonised statistical reporting templates
• Implementation of SDMX
• Coordinated databases among international
agencies
• Reference websites incl. G-20/global aggregates
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Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination I
• The financial and economic crisis illustrates the
degree of interdependence among major
economic areas in a globalised world
• Multilateral policy responses are crucial for
strong, sustainable and balanced growth
• Enhanced and globally-comparable economic
and financial statistics/indicators are needed
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Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination II
Main requirements for official statistics due to
enhanced multilateral surveillance and policy
coordination
• Comparable statistics/indicators for countries/
economic areas
(e.g. public debt and fiscal deficits; private savings
rate, private debt; external imbalance)
• Easy accessibility of official statistics/indicators
• G-20/global statistical aggregates (e.g. G-20 GDP)
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Status quo of official statistics - achievements
• International statistical standards/methodology,
see “Global Inventory of Statistical Standards”
• Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and
agreed Quality frameworks (e.g. IMF DQAF,
European Statistical System Code of Practice,
ESCB public commitment on European statistics
and detailed quality reports)
• Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX)
sponsored by international agencies and
supported by the UN Statistical Commission
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Status quo of official statistics - challenges
• Core statistical reporting templates harmonised
among international agencies (scope, frequency,
timeliness, revisions/vintages, seasonal
adjustment, …)
• World-wide and across statistical domains
implementation of SDMX
• Coordinated databases among international
agencies and reference websites
• Agreements on the agencies that sponsor and
the agency that releases G-20/global aggregates
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Harmonised statistical reporting templates
• The scope needs to be based on international
statistical standards and user demand (e.g.
due to multilateral surveillance)
• The harmonisation commences with a core
set within a statistical domain
• First domains selected: government finance
statistics, sector accounts, securities statistics,
international investment position
• Implementation timetable and commitments
to be agreed with national and international
agencies
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Implementation of SDMX
• IT standards and Content-oriented guidelines
(see SDMX website)
• Missing link: Data Structure Definitions (DSDs)
and domain specific Code Lists
• First priority for economic and financial
statistics: coordinated DSDs for SNA 2008 and
BPM6
• Second priority: “derived” DSDs, e.g. for GFS
• DSD development and maintenance including
governance structures
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Coordinated databases
• Core parts of the databases of international
agencies should be updated timely (within
seconds! after new releases) and consistently.
• Objective: automated (without manual
intervention) interaction among websites
applying SDMX (test : ECB – IMF)
• Transition period: structured data flow from
national to and among international agencies
• Quality assurance: the quality of each time series
is ensured by just one international agency
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Reference websites incl. G-20/global aggregates
• Reference websites sponsored by several
international agencies for core indicators and
harmonised reporting templates (e.g. the
Principal Global Indicator (PGI) website)
• Comparable statistics among countries/
economies including metadata
• G-20/global aggregates and economy
breakdowns (e.g. quarterly G-20 GDP growth
rates at t+70) sponsored by several
international agencies and released by one of
them
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