Linking Trade with Structural Business Statistics Eurostat Progress Report Karo Nuortila Eurostat/Unit G3 International Trade Statistics - Production

2 Trade and business statistics in globalisation analysis Statistics on trading of goods describe trade flows between countries with a breakdown of products –Monthly statistics with detailed breakdowns of products and partner countries –No data on traders (no explicit statistical units) Business Statistics describe the structure and evolution of activities of businesses –Annual (SBS) or monthly (STS) statistics with a great number of variables –Basic breakdown according to the economic activity –Limited information on external trade Trade and business statistics are based on different concepts and classification, thus using them separately may provide incoherent basis for analysing the effects of external trade on production, employment and enterprises’ performances. Globalisation makes the analysis even more complicated as international production and supply chains are changing Analysis on the impacts of globalisation on economies requires new combined statistics, compiled with sound methodology

3 Trade statistics by enterprise characteristics: project history in brief First discussions and methodological studies started in late 1990s. Four centralised pilot studies undertaken since 2002 –Reference years 1999, 2002, 2003 and 2005 –Actions by the EU Member States co-financed by the Commission Methodology developed over time –Changes in indicators, breakdowns and compilation rules –Currently 6 indicators with harmonised breakdowns

4 Trade statistics by enterprise characteristics: Pilot study for reference year 2005 Preparatory meeting in October 2007 Launched officially in November 2007 Methodological changes –All indicators are split into intra- and extra-EU25 –Some minor modifications to breakdowns New data collection form; includes more metadata and data validation sheet Data is available for 19 MSs and 1 EFTA country Some highlights of the data are shown in following slides. Complete data (Excel sheets) are available in public Circa site: entation/characteristics&vm=detailed&sb=Title entation/characteristics&vm=detailed&sb=Title

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9 Preparation of legal basis Intrastat and Extrastat legal acts are currently under revision Basic Regulations –Accepted by the Commission, discussion continues in the Council and Parliament –Targets to enter into force: Intrastat 2009 or 2010, Extrastat 2010 –Include a standardised article on trade by business characteristics Requirement on annual compilation, based on linkages to business registers Detailed requirements will be described in the Implementing rules (Commission Regulations) Implementing rules –First drafts of implementing rules have been prepared and discussed in working groups –The proposal covers main topics such as scope, statistical units, variables, indicators, periodicity, delay and confidentiality

10 Way forward Annual studies will continue –Voluntary until legal acts have been adopted –Minimize changes to data requests Allow comparison over time and decrease workload of Member States –Further methodological developments Intra- and extra-EU trade not comparable in terms of number of enterprises => under-coverage of SMEs in intra-EU trade Matching of complicated businesses: trade may be allocated to headquarter instead of “true” trader => biased results Development of IT-tools and improvement of publications –New IT-system needed to support data treatment, validation and publishing –Integration into existing data dissemination tools –New publications (SIFs, working papers) to highlight main findings New areas to be studied in the frame of MEETS programme