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

2 Overview Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination Status quo of official statistics – achievements and challenges Principal Global Indicators (PGIs) Harmonised reporting templates Conclusions

3 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

4 Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination Group of 20 (G20) Leaders' statement from Seoul summit on 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)

5 Status quo of official statistics - achievements Agreed and up-to-date international statistical standards/methodology (e.g 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)

6 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

7 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 is updated with statistics/indicators available in existing databases of the supporting ISOs

8 Principal Global Indicators (PGIs) The PGIs Will become gradually SDMX compliant Will be supported by visualisation tools (e.g. 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

9 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

10 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

11 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