Viet Vu
Consultant to United Nations’ Statistics Division
15-17 March 2010
Institutional arrangement: should GRPs
compiled by regional statistical offices or NSO?
 Why GRP compilation by regional offices?
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Strong demand of regional government to plan and monitor the
development of regional economy;
Fiscal constraint of national statistical offices.
 Disadvantages:
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Do not have full information on national activities at regional
levels;
Corporations registered/reported to local levels may have
operations elsewhere;
Problems in measuring services, particularly in constant prices;
Discrepancies between sum of GRPs and GDP;
Total staff in GRP compilation in the whole country is high and
may not be adequately trained.
 Possible improvement


Economic data are collected within an integrated sampling scheme
to satisfy both national and regional needs;
Benchmark value added coefficients and price deflators prepared
by NSO and provided to regional offices.
institutional arrangement: should GRPs compiled
by regional statistical offices or NSO? (2)
 Why should GRP be compiled by NSO
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
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All the disadvantages created by GRP compilation at
regional levels are eliminated;
All information available at NSO can be utilized, allowing
for cross checking of one region against other regions and
national averages;
Equality between the sum of GRPs and GDP is guaranteed
at both current and constant prices;
Statistical methods can be appropriately utilized and well
coordinated by better trained statisticians;
Regional political interference is avoided.
Issues for discussion
 Institutional arrangement: Should GRPs be
compiled centrally by NSO?
 GRP at constant prices: Should national price
or regional price indexes be used for
deflation?
 Indicators for estimation and extrapolation:
Issues for discussion (cont.)
 Informal activities at regional levels:
 Should benchmark household income and expenditure be
implemented at both national and regional levels every five
years and on the basis of this benchmark information,
estimate quarterly and annual information using employment
data?
 Is it possible to have annual household income and
expenditure survey for both national and regional purposes or
is it too expensive?
 Should employment by both Establishment Survey (ES) and
by Labor Force Survey (LFS) be recommended for developing
countries to use for not only estimating informal activities but
also monitoring employment in the country?
 Other alternatives?