Draft Report on Responses to the
Methodological Soundness
Questionnaire
OECD Statistics Directorate
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005
The MS Questionnaire:
• Joint Eurostat OECD initiative.
• Questionnaire designed to address lack of
comparative information on country practices
• Focus on implementation of EBOPS
• Questionnaires sent June 2003 to all Eurostat
member and candidate and OECD countries.
• To be a snapshot of methodology in 2003
(methodology is evolving steadily)
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005
Structure of questionnaire
• Refers to recommendations in MSITS and
implementation of EBOPS
• 15 sections
– 1General principles (inc data sources)
– 2 Transportation
– 3 Travel
– 4 Communication services
– ..
– 15 EBOPS extensions
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005
Current response availability
•
35 country replies received to date (July 2005)
•
Eurostat 26 (24 members and two candidate)
replies: No information yet from Cyprus
•
OECD (non-Eurostat part) 9 member countries
replied: Canada, Iceland, Japan, Korea,
Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia
and USA. No information yet for Mexico.
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005
History of Analysis
•
Some partial analyses of responses to selected
questions had been done by Eurostat, WTO/OMT, and
OECD in 2003 and 2004
•
Eurostat created Access database to store responses
•
Summer 2005 OECD in consultation with Eurostat
completed the database with responses and did a full
basic analysis
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005
Data sources
• Number and variety of data sources (over 4 sources per
country) – 2 countries list 10 sources, although
subjective
• For travel a majority of the countries use surveys e.g. of
households, travellers, hotels, and/or credit card
companies. 13 mentioned the use of a border survey of
travellers.
• Direct reporting of BOP transactions by large enterprises
is also mentioned by a number of European countries.
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005
Some observations
• Snapshot of situation in 2003
• Data sources question particularly useful
• “Yes- no- partially” options are not always so
informative or discriminative
• Remarks are interesting
• Database and raw responses are available for
additional analyses
• Useful reference document for understanding
how data collected and problems faced in
practice
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005
Future plans
• Since responses to MSQ are a potentially useful
source of harmonised methodological
information for others
• OECD proposes to seek written
comments/corrections from countries and then
make the report and data publically available as
a resource for countries
• Eurostat proposes to discuss the MSQ at BOP
WG in October
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005
Questions
•
Request: comments on, or corrections to, the
analysis undertaken [ by when] then make
public – report, database and raw responses
•
Do delegates agree with this approach?
•
Are there further actions delegates would
recommend regarding the report on the MSQ?
OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Tradein-services Statistics Sept 2005