Responding to the Financial Crisis
Adelheid Burgi-Schmelz
Director, IMF Statistics Department
Overview

The financial crisis that started in advanced economies is
spreading to emerging markets and low-income countries.
This is reflected in lending by the IMF to member countries;
a year ago lending was depressed, in recent months it has
now bounced back strongly.
IMF Credit: Amounts Outstanding and undrawn balances
$70
$60
60.0
58.7
$50
USD billions

$40
$30
20.6
$20
14.4
$10
$0
End of 2005
End of 2006
Source: IMF Financial Resources and Liquidity Position
Target for IMF lendable resources: $500 bn
Managing Director: 2/13/09
End of 2007
Jan. 2009
Overview

To further emphasize the severity of the situation, the
IMF recently concluded an agreement with Japan to
borrow $100 billion,
 to boost the funds available for lending to member
countries,
 given the potential scale of borrowing the Fund
is anticipating as the crisis spreads.
Overview


Many aspects of the crisis story were available in the
official statistics:
 increasing assets to capital ratios of financial
institutions
 imbalances in current accounts
 fiscal deficits, and
 financial cross-border positions for industrial countries
growing significantly faster than real activity.
The financial crisis is not the result of a lack of proper
macroeconomic statistics.
Overview



Indeed, the emergence over the past several years of a
consistent economic statistics system and the data
transparency initiatives, such as the IMF’s Special Data
Dissemination Standard, remain highly relevant.
However, as we see the recent financial crisis spread to
the real economy and across borders this is not the time
to be complacent about economic and financial statistics.
What can we do to help?
Policy needs for Data


One conclusion we have reached is that the recent
events underline the importance to go beyond
traditional statistical production approaches to obtain

a set of timely and higher-frequency economic and
financial indicators, at least for systemically important
countries in more innovative ways.
Indeed, the speed at which the crisis developed
highlighted the need for indicators that could support
early warning efforts.
Policy needs for Data


This entails, among other things,

a new perspective in assessing the trade-off between
timeliness and completeness, and

a new look at the traditional statistical production
model to meet the needs of today’s world.
In short, we need to ensure the continued relevance of
economic and financial statistics

in timeliness and frequency, and

in the evolution from first estimates to solid statistics.
Interagency group on economic
and financial statistics


Also, despite the robust nature of the economic
statistical system, the crisis has highlighted the need
to address certain data gaps.
Against this background, international agencies
closely involved in economic and financial statistics
have come together to establish the Interagency
Group on Economic and Financial Statistics,
 under the chair of the IMF, with the BIS, ECB,
Eurostat, OECD, the UN, and the World Bank.
Interagency group on economic
and financial statistics



The group met for the first time on Friday, following
two teleconferences.
In many of these fields, work is already progressing
and we want to ensure that there is not duplication
of efforts at the international level
But to strengthen data availability the group agreed
on two priority areas:
Interagency group on economic
and financial statistics



First, the group agreed to set up a public on-line
website that
 displays a set of economic and financial indicators
for a group of systemic countries,
 with links to relevant websites, including the
agencies on the group.
The intention is that each agency would contribute
data to the website.
The intention is to initially launch the website in the
next 4-8 weeks with available information.
 The website will expand over time
Interagency group on economic
and financial statistics


The development will draw on the IMF experience with its
newly created internal Data Link.
The Data Link:
 focus on systemically important countries and provides
cross country comparisons;
 make a wide range of data sources available to users;
and
 include information that is much more timely and
frequent
Interagency group on economic
and financial statistics


In developing this site it has become evident that not
all data are as up-to-date as we would hope
 even for major economies.
Also, in the area of fiscal statistics in particular the
idea of providing consistent and comparable data
across countries has been a challenge.
Interagency group on economic
and financial statistics


Second, the group is identifying gaps in the available
economic and financial datasets.
For instance:
 The financial sector has a central role in the crisis,
and there is a need to enhance data availability,
 not least for those segments of the financial
sector where the reporting of data is not well
established.
Interagency group on economic
and financial statistics



Balance sheet data of the other sectors,
particularly the nonfinancial corporates and
household sectors.
 The importance of sectoral balance sheets has
been highlighted by the crisis:
The impact of house prices on household net
worth has been highly relevant to the current
crisis, but country practice in compiling these data
is uneven.
And issues relating the ultimate risk/credit transfer
instruments
Interagency group on economic
and financial statistics


Looking forward, in the near term the group is to:
 develop an inventory of gaps,
 identify whether an existing group is investigating,
or not, and
 agree a way forward.
But of course, we all face strong pressures of work in
response to the crisis.
Conclusions




The financial crisis is not the result of a lack of proper
macroeconomic statistics.
However, it is vital at this critical time that economic
statisticians are attuned to the legitimate data needs
of policy makers.
And to develop a work program to fill the data gaps
that the crisis has revealed.
We look forward to the support of national authorities
as we progress on this work.