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The availability, timeliness and qualityof rapid estimates

UNCTAD experience

Henri Laurencin

INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON TIMELINESS, METHODOLOGY AND COMPARABILITY OFRAPID ESTIMATES OF ECONOMIC TRENDS

27-29 May 2009, Ottawa, Canada

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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.

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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

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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

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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 ...

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Indicators

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

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Indicators

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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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Ex1: Volatility of exchange rates

The calculation of monthly nominal and real effective exchange rates is carried out on the basis of:Bilateral exchange ratesBilateral export and import flowsPrice indices

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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

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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

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Thank you for your attention

Henri.Laurencin@unctad.org