1 The availability, timeliness and quality of rapid estimates UNCTAD experience Henri Laurencin INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON TIMELINESS, METHODOLOGY AND COMPARABILITY OF RAPID ESTIMATES OF ECONOMIC TRENDS May 2009, Ottawa, Canada

2 Mandate Secretary General of UNCTAD established an interdivisional Task Force on Systemic Issues and Economic Cooperation. A group of UNCTAD economists was assigned to examine the systemic dimensions of the crisis and formulate proposals for policy action nationally and multilaterally. The development dimension was at the forefront of UNCTAD’s concerns.

3 Statisticians and economists Role of the statistician: Understand the objective and approach of economists to validate apparent and underlying requirements for statistics Explain limitations and possible solutions, propose appropriate alternatives when data is missing and finally Provide expected statistical material

4 Demand of statistics The research work of the Task Force generated: The request of basic data and, A need for calculation of derived indicators Covering: A wide variety of economic and financial domains, For almost all countries, and in particular developing countries and economies in transition

5 Indicators Statistics well known by statisticians to monitor economic trends: GDP growth, production, demand and stocks International trade Trends and volatility of commodity prices Current account External resources, reserves...

6 Indicators... Exchange rates Interest rates Inflation Productivity Unemployment Government deficit/surplus and debt

7 Indicators... and other financial indicators that statisticians are not always so familiar with: Equity price indices Bond market indices Commodity futures

8 From annual to daily data An increasing demand for monthly indicators updated in timely fashion on inflation, production, merchandise trade, reserves, interest rates. A few weekly or daily financial indicators on such matters as exchange rates, equity price indices, bond market indices and commodity futures.

9 Difficulties and challenges How to provide rapid estimates of economic trends in those developing countries and economies in transition that do not report statistics? Ignore missing data and present statistics on the basis of reported data and at country group level (if all major players are present) Collect or prepare when possible estimates, at least for the main players Propose alternate indicators

10 Data management Maintain basic time series by : Identifying and if necessary diversifying sources Automating data exchange and data quality control to shorten delay Gradually replace estimates by reported data when it becomes available and is validated Enable the calculation of derived indicators on the basis of basic time series by: Introducing consistent definitions for statistical units, concepts, variables and harmonizing classifications Creating processing capacity

11 Sources Sources of data: International organization sources are essential, especially if data are quickly released and data exchange can be automated National official sources are complementary and usually limited to the collection of missing recent data Other data providers (private, academic) may be best for specific matters such as finance or commodities or, in some cases, comparison of forecasts

12 Ex1: Volatility of exchange rates The calculation of monthly nominal and real effective exchange rates is carried out on the basis of: Bilateral exchange rates Bilateral export and import flows Price indices

13 Ex2: Merchandise trade trends The calculation of monthly volume indices of exports and imports for the main country groups is experimented on the basis of: Value of nominal monthly trade flows reported by a few countries Estimated exports and imports flows of non reporting countries on the basis of the statistics reported by their main trade partners Reported export and import price indices when available Traded product price indices applied to the trade structure of non reporting countries

14 Proposal for next steps Agree on a set of indicators Implement automated procedures for the exchange of data between countries and international organizations and between international organizations Share information among countries and international organizations on the methodology of rapid estimates

15 Thank you for your attention