1. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 Draft Report on Responses to the Methodological Soundness Questionnaire OECD Statistics Directorate

2. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 The MS Questionnaire: Joint Eurostat OECD initiative. Questionnaire designed to address lack of comparative information on country practices Focus on implementation of EBOPS Questionnaires sent June 2003 to all Eurostat member and candidate and OECD countries. To be a snapshot of methodology in 2003 (methodology is evolving steadily)

3. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 Structure of questionnaire Refers to recommendations in MSITS and implementation of EBOPS 15 sections –1General principles (inc data sources) –2 Transportation –3 Travel –4 Communication services –.. –15 EBOPS extensions

4. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 Current response availability 35 country replies received to date (July 2005) Eurostat 26 (24 members and two candidate) replies: No information yet from Cyprus OECD (non-Eurostat part) 9 member countries replied: Canada, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia and USA. No information yet for Mexico.

5. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 History of Analysis Some partial analyses of responses to selected questions had been done by Eurostat, WTO/OMT, and OECD in 2003 and 2004 Eurostat created Access database to store responses Summer 2005 OECD in consultation with Eurostat completed the database with responses and did a full basic analysis

6. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 Data sources Number and variety of data sources (over 4 sources per country) – 2 countries list 10 sources, although subjective For travel a majority of the countries use surveys e.g. of households, travellers, hotels, and/or credit card companies. 13 mentioned the use of a border survey of travellers. Direct reporting of BOP transactions by large enterprises is also mentioned by a number of European countries.

7. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 Some observations Snapshot of situation in 2003 Data sources question particularly useful “Yes- no- partially” options are not always so informative or discriminative Remarks are interesting Database and raw responses are available for additional analyses Useful reference document for understanding how data collected and problems faced in practice

8. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 Future plans Since responses to MSQ are a potentially useful source of harmonised methodological information for others OECD proposes to seek written comments/corrections from countries and then make the report and data publically available as a resource for countries Eurostat proposes to discuss the MSQ at BOP WG in October

9. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade- in-services Statistics Sept 2005 Questions Request: comments on, or corrections to, the analysis undertaken [ by when] then make public – report, database and raw responses Do delegates agree with this approach? Are there further actions delegates would recommend regarding the report on the MSQ?