Transcript Envisaged Developments

Briefing on the work of the Inter-Agency
Group on Economic and Financial Statistics
- Envisaged Developments Werner Bier
Deputy Director General Statistics
European Central Bank
United Nations Statistical Commission 2011 Side Event
New York, 23 February 2011
Overview
• Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination
• Status quo of official statistics – achievements and
challenges
• Principal Global Indicators (PGIs)
• Harmonised reporting templates
• Conclusions
2
Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination
• The financial and economic crisis illustrated the degree
of interdependence among major economic areas in an
economically globalised world
• Policy responses are still bound to be national and only
in exceptional cases supranational (e.g. European
Central Bank)
• Multilateral policy responses are crucial for strong,
sustainable and balanced growth
• Enhanced and globally-comparable economic and
financial statistics/indicators are needed
3
Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination
• Group of 20 (G20) Leaders' statement from Seoul
summit on 11-12 November 2010: Persistently large
imbalances, assessed against indicative guidelines …
warrant an assessment of their nature. … These
indicative guidelines composed of a range of indicators
would serve as a mechanism to facilitate timely
identification of large imbalances that require preventive
and corrective actions to be taken.
• Main requirements for official statistics:
– 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
– Global/G20 statistical aggregates (e.g. G20 GDP)
4
Status quo of official statistics - achievements
• Agreed and up-to-date international statistical
standards/methodology (e.g. 2008 SNA, BPM6)
• 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)
• Decades of experience in compiling national statistics
• Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX)
sponsored by seven international and supranational
organisations (ISOs) and supported by the UNSC
• Excellent international and regional networks and
governance (e.g. UNSC, IMF BOPCOM, OECD
CSTAT, CCSA, IAG, IFC, CMFB) and partly
supranational governance (e.g. legislation by Eurostat
& European System of Central Banks)
5
Status quo of official statistics - challenges
• Statistical requirements should be agreed among ISOs
• Flow of data from the various national authorities to
the respective various ISOs is hardly discussed
• Compliance of national authorities with international
statistical standards is uneven
• Almost no (timely) global/G20 aggregates (exceptions
e.g. UN population, UN external trade, OECD GDP,
OECD CPI, OECD unemployment)
• Competition between commercial data providers and
ISOs Statistics Departments
6
Principal Global Indicators (PGIs)
The PGIs
• Are developed by seven ISOs (BIS, ECB, Eurostat, IMF,
OECD, World Bank and the UN) in the Inter-Agency
Group on Economic and Financial Developments (IAG)
• Focus on the G20 economies (and in the near future five
additional Financial Stability Board (FSB) countries) and
on key economic and financial statistics/indicators
• Website
http:www.principalglobalindicators.org/default.aspx is
updated with statistics/indicators available in existing
databases of the supporting ISOs
7
Principal Global Indicators (PGIs)
The PGIs
• Will become gradually SDMX compliant
• Will be supported by visualisation tools (e.g.
http:kosis.kr/http://kosis.kr/nsportal/bulletin/html/index_
eng.html#)
• Will be complemented by selected global/G20
aggregates (e.g. GDP growth rates)
• May develop into a supporting tool of the G20 Indicative
Guidelines
8
PGIs – Envisaged Developments
The IAG enhances the PGIs by
• Harmonising the (detailed) statistical requirements
among the seven ISOs and across different statistics (a
pilot project focuses on government finance statistics
and its integration with e.g. securities issues statistics)
• Agreeing on the PGI data sources/flow among the seven
ISOs and thereby the responsibilities for compliance
monitoring (e.g. euro area country > Eurostat/ECB >
OECD, BIS > IMF, UN, World Bank)
• Developing SDMX data structure definitions for file
transfers (push mode) or downloading of files from ISO
or country websites (pull mode)
• Involving the G20 economies where needed
9
Harmonised reporting templates
• The international statistical standards/methodologies
need complementary implementation programmes i.e.
reporting templates specifying the covered statistics/
indicators, their timeliness, frequency, seasonal and
working day adjustment, etc.
• The data templates should be designed as modular with
a “Tier 1 module” for main aggregates and a “Tier 2
module” for detailed breakdowns; a further Tier module
may refer to specificities of the economy
• The coordinated implementation of the PGIs and the
data template for a core set of high frequency indicators
as discussed by the UNSC is such a short-term pilot
exercise
10
Conclusions
• Official statistics is called upon to support multilateral
surveillance in a world of global imbalances and uneven
global recovery
• The international and national statistical authorities
have the technical and organisational means to master
this challenge by close cooperation
• In addition to an agreed medium- to longer-term vision
for official statistics, limited pilot exercises are needed in
the short-term in order to exercise and prove effective
international cooperation
11