International Seminar on Timeliness, Methodology and Comparability of
Rapid Estimates of Economic Trends, 27-29 May 2009, Ottawa, Canada
MONGOLIA COUNTRY CONTRIBUTION PAPER
“The Availability, Timeliness, and Quality of
Rapid Estimates in Case of Mongolia”
Presenter: G. Gerelt-Od,
First Vice-Chairman, NSO of Mongolia
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Contents
1. Legal framework and regulations for activities
of the official statistics;
2. Role of the official statistics in the period of
financial and economic downturn;
3. Frequency, availability and quality of rapid
estimates: Practice of Mongolia;
4. Challenges encountered and some avenues
towards addressing them; and
5. Conclusion
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1. Legal Framework and Regulations
As stipulated in Article 12 of the Law on Statistics, the NSO
enjoys the following rights with respect to the coordination
of official statistical activities:
 Provides unified professional management and
coordination for official statistical activities;
 Makes sure that administrative statistics are not
duplicated with official ones and the integrity of
methodologies is ensured, approves and adopts
indicators, methodologies, and instructions of
administrative statistics, assesses coverage and
accuracy of statistics;
 Improves methodologies for statistics and enhances
their scientific basis;
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1. Legal Framework and Regulations
As stipulated in Article 12 of the Law on Statistics, the
NSO enjoys the following rights with respect to the
coordination of official statistical activities:
 Approves and adopts indicators, methodologies and
instructions for official statistics;
 Develops and follows statistical indicators and
methodologies in conformity with international
classifications, methodologies and standards; and
 Establishes unified methodologies for national
statistics in conjunction with relevant agencies and
follows them;
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2. Role of Official Statistics in the Period of
Financial and Economic Downturn
•
Wide-ranging monitoring of consequences of the global
financial and economic crisis on country’s social and
economic situation;
•
Determination of impact of the financial and economical
downturn on households, and population in poverty and
vulnerable groups and real sector performances,
• Provision of high frequency data/information to the
analysts and policy makers, and
•
Early warning of the financial and economic downturn
and ‘alarm system’ to prevent from further difficulties
and consequences.
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3. Frequency, Availability and Quality of
Rapid Estimates: Practice of Mongolia
•
An Action Plan for overcoming the current financial and
economic turmoil adopted the State Great Khural
/Parliament/of Mongolia, in January 2009
• An Ad Hoc Committee with a function to provide
efficient and timely management for the exercise to
ease the financial and economic downturn, was set up in
early February 2009
– Headed by Prime Minister of Mongolia;
– With representation from government ministries
and agencies, and
– National Statistical Office, Bank of Mongolia, and
Financial Regulatory Committee, which directly
report to the State Great Khural/Parliament/.
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3. Frequency, Availability and Quality of
Rapid Estimates: Practice of Mongolia
• A Working Group under the Ad Hoc Committee assigned to timely
and efficiently provide reliable and accurate data/ information on
the financial and economic downturn was established by the
Government of Mongolia. The Working Group is composed of heads
of departments and divisions of relevant government ministries and
other public agencies.
• The Working Group is convening on a weekly basis to analyze
information and data received from relevant institutions on daily,
weekly, and monthly basis, to exchange views on and review fiscal,
financial and economic issues, and prepare and submit drafts of
measures to be taken further by the Ad Hoc Committee.
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3. Frequency, Availability and Quality of
Rapid Estimates: Practice of Mongolia
o The Working Group is collecting a data/ information on limited set
of socio economic indicators from relevant government and other
agencies, on daily and weekly basis.
On daily basis:
 External market price on major export and import goods,
 Budget revenue, and
 Exchange rates.
On weekly basis:





Consumer price,
Fiscal condition,
Monetary and capital market,
External trade, and
Labor market.
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4. Challenges Encountered and
Some Avenues Towards Addressing Them
Challenges
• Assurance of not only high frequency or timeliness of official
statistics , but also comprehensive quality /reliability ,
comparability/;
• To determine and develop new indicators showing new social
and economic phenomena and provide the government and
other users with reliable and quality statistics – official
statistics should expeditiously identify changes in society and
economy in a particular time and statistics becoming
necessary to users as a result of the changes and provide
users with reliable and timely data that meet their needs
rather than producing a limited certain number of indicators
periodically; and
• To strengthen the national capacity, increase budget support,
coordination and improve utilization of all available resources,
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4. Challenges Encountered and
Some Avenues Towards Addressing Them
Gateways
• Statisticians should keep pace with the growing needs
of statistics;
• Administrative information system should be supported
by unified guidance and coordination, and centralization
of responsibilities should be decentralized;
• Data producing institution should be supported and
helped – advise them to employ the same concepts and
definitions at the national level and to note sources,
concepts, definitions and methods used if the same
concepts and definitions are not applied; and
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5. Conclusion
When there is a rapidly increasing demand for
high frequency and reliable official statistics
showing changes in social and economic
situation in countries due to the financial and
economic downturn , capacity building of
national statistical system is vital to the
improvement of frequency, availability and
quality of rapid estimates
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