General Challenges
and
Drawbacks
Incomplete Coverage
• The incomplete coverage of the accounts in most member
countries, which in most cases is the result of the lack of
exhaustivity of the accounts themselves.
• In many cases, economic activities carried out in the
establishments outside the list frame are not covered in the
regular economic surveys carried by NSOs. This lack of
coverage does not only relate to the informal household units,
but also extends to formal activities not adequately captured by
the traditional statistical survey instruments.
• The lack of recurrent statistical data covering all economic
activities in all sectors;
• The lack of updated business registers.
Volume Data
• Constant price estimates of the production-side aggregates
are mostly based on the use of the consumer price index;
(Due to the absence of a system of producer and wholesale prices, or
quantity indices of output)
• The expenditure- and income-side aggregates at constant
prices are mostly not compiled;
• The evaluation at current prices is also weak, given the
absence of information on key aggregates, such as changes
in inventories and the operating surplus and/or mixed income;
Conceptual Gaps
1) The household sector is sometimes not appropriately defined
for the compilation of the sequence of accounts;
2) Although the Gulf countries in the region have significant
exploration activities such as large oil production and reserves,
Expenditure on exploration is not included in capital formation
or even in the value of output;
3) The FISIM are in most cases not allocated to final users;
4) The estimates of the consumption of fixed assets are weak,
generating problems in estimating gross and net values.
Other Drawbacks
• Problems in estimating gross and net values due to the lack of
reliable estimates of the consumption of fixed assets;
• In some cases, gross fixed capital formation is not estimated
at the level of its component, but as an aggregated item;
• A true balancing process of the estimations from the different
sides is seldom attempted by member countries;
• The estimation of some transactions as residuals as is the
case in treating ‘Change in inventory’ in most of the countries;
• Non separation of NPISH as a separate sector and non
differentiation between private sector under local/foreign
authority.
And More Drawbacks…
• Confidentiality restrictions on many important sets of statistical
data such as oil and gas, military expenditure, infrastructure,
etc…
• Lack of strict statistical laws obliging the various units to
provide the statistical bureau with the requested data;
Limited Use in Decision-Making
The limited use of the accounts in the decision-making
process at the national and regional level due to:
• The lack of complete sequence of accounts;
• The lack of estimates for major macroeconomic aggregates
of Quarterly National Accounts;
• Overlooking the importance of the use of NA for economic
and social analysis and its significance for policy making;
• The lack of timeliness with which the national statistical
offices generally release the National Accounts;
• The absence of release calendars for data dissemination;
• The unclear revision policies followed.
Country Needs (1)
• In general, many member countries are in need for capacity
building and storage of national and international expertise at
the National Accounts departments;
• Capacity Building efforts are to be supported, at the national
level, with increased technology and know-how to use
advanced software for compiling, such as compilation of
sequential accounts and Supply and Use Tables;
• Need for reduction of the frequent turnover of staff in the
relevant sectors of the statistics offices;
• Need for reviewing the questionnaires of economic surveys for
the adoption of the definitions of production and capital
formation as per the new system.
Country Needs (2)
• Need for a rational re-grouping of industry and product
classifications in a way suitable for the compilation and
presentation of the final estimates to users;
• Improving the overall availability and quality of constant-price
estimates, especially on the demand and income sides, and
the available of data for the production-side estimates;
• Developing a complete sequence of accounts, especially
that institutional sector accounts are largely incomplete,
covering in the majority of the cases the total economy and
the Rest of the World.
Country Needs (3)
• The estimation of the capital stock and the use of a
Perpetual Inventory Method to obtain data on the
consumption of fixed capital is overall particularly weak in
the region, and the development of a system of core shortterm economic statistics for the indirect estimation of the
principal macroeconomic aggregates of Quarterly National
Accounts is at the very preliminary stage.
Thank you