The availability, timeliness and quality
of rapid estimates
UNCTAD experience
Henri Laurencin
INTERNATIONAL SEMINAR ON TIMELINESS,
METHODOLOGY AND COMPARABILITY OF
RAPID 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 rates
Bilateral export and import flows
Price 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
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