OECD-Eurostat Expert Meeting on Trade in
Services Statistics
Eurostat activities in trade in
services and related balance
of payments areas
Item 17b
September 19, 2007
OECD-Eurostat Expert Meeting
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1. Balance of payments quality report
 Eurostat BOP Committee approved content and
assessment procedure
 Pilot exercise has been carried out
 Assessment procedure based on two pillars:
 Individual country assessment
 General assessment of data quality in the EU
 The concept has been fine-tuned
 First round of “normal” quality reporting will start
October 2007.
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OECD-Eurostat Expert Meeting
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2. Foreign affiliates statistics (FATS)
 FATS Regulation was adopted in June 2007.
 Outward FATS: Transmission of data on turnover,
persons employed and no. of enterprises on a mandatory
basis.
 first reference year: 2007
 Pilot studies on some additional variables in order to
assess the relevance and feasibility of collecting data.
 On the basis of the conclusions the Commission shall
adopt the necessary implementation measures.
 Eurostat has published a recommendation manual
which contains definitions and supplementary guidance.
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3. Remittances
 Ad-hoc survey carried out in May 2007
 Data for the years 2005-2006 on:
 workers' remittances,
 compensation of employees,
 “net compensation of employees”,
vis-à-vis:
 intra-EU-27, extra-EU-27, total World,
 3 major destinations, 3 major source countries.
 For the first time flows to and from the EU-27 have
been calculated.
 In addition major corridors of both remittances and
"net CoE" flows were identified and quantified.
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4. Technical Group Travel
 Activities concentrates on follow-up and monitoring of
the implementation of national collection systems;
 Multilateral forum to analyse bilateral travel figures.
 May 2007 meeting concentrated on the following
issues:
– Treatment of durable and valuable goods
– Use of credit card information
– Treatment of transactions involving tour operators
resident in third countries
– Treatment of same day travellers
– Sampling, grossing up and administrative sources
– Action plan for reducing asymmetries
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5. Task Force on RoW account
 TF-RoW was created to support work on reconciliation
of BoP and RoW account.
 It addressed methodological aspects and ran a survey
on empirical differences.
 Following issues were discussed:
- Constructions services
- Income and collective investment institutions
- FISIM
- Reclassifications between goods and services
- Transit trade
- EU transfers
- Taxes on income and wealth
- Estimation of illegal activities
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6. Task Force Reconciliation BoP/FTS
The main objective is to improve coherence between
BOP and FTS statistics:
 analyse reconciliation tables
 analyse studies on the c.i.f./f.o.b. adjustment
 analyse current practices in other adjustments.
 ensure smooth co-operation between BoP/FTS compilers.
 provide recommendations on implementing best practices.
The BoP WG at its March 2007 meeting approved five
recommendations proposed by the Task Force.
TF discussed the "fundamental" adjustments which
should be made in the transition from FTS to BoP.
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7. TF Impact of possible changes in
Intrastat on NA and BOP
The Task Force has the following mandate:
From of NA and BOP perspective, discuss merits and
drawbacks of possible options for a new Intrastat system
 Develop minimum user requirements for statistical
production.
 liaise with other Intrastat task forces
 By September 2007, deliver a report, concentrating on
minimum user requirements.
 In course of 2008, deliver detailed report quantifying
potential impact on GDP and GNI measurements
Currently the TF is conducting a survey to find out the
needs of BOP and NA compilers.
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8. EuroGroup Register
The EuroGroups Register aims for covering MNE groups
with heads in and outside EU and their members in EU.
 current EGR contains 600 MNE groups with at least one
group member in the EU;
 the total number of units involved is about 80 000;
 variables available for the units were e.g. ownership
links and percentages, the NACE activity code and no. of
employees;
In 2007 calls for tenders were launched for further data
acquisitions and IT development.
The aim is that in 2009 all the largest enterprise groups
are included in the EGR.
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9. Task Force on International Sourcing
The objectives of this TF are:
 define a framework for measuring international
sourcing
 design operational definitions for surveying purposes
and identify the survey population to be covered
 collect direct statistical information on international
sourcing via a targeted business survey, and
 establish a set of indicators on international sourcing
The TF is carrying out surveys in the participating
countries and final results are expected to be delivered
to Eurostat by end of 2007.
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10. Valuation of FDI Equity Stocks
Eurostat carried out in 2006 a first voluntary collection of
FDI equity stock data with a breakdown into:
 listed: market value and own funds at book value (OFBV),
 unlisted companies – in OFBV only
The results show that:
 share of listed companies is quite small.
 capitalisation ratios very significantly
 different ratios for inward and outward investments.
Currently a number of methods is being discussed, the
use of the capitalisation ratio one amongst them.
Further voluntary collection of the data will be carried out
to investigate robustness of this method.
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11. Work on asymmetries
 Asymmetries are a main concern for Eurostat as they
reflect on the quality and credibility of the BoP data.
 In the BoP WG of March 2007, Eurostat presented a
document illustrating developments, scale and the
persistence of asymmetries.
 Eurostat encourages Member States to pursue the
"bottom-up" approach to tackle the significant
bilateral asymmetries.
 LU, NL and the UK have agreed to exchange and
compare data on some biggest investors.
 A report on this exercise will be presented at October
2007 Eurostat BOP Working Group meeting.
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12. Network group Direct Reporting
The aim is to facilitate exchange of experience on
implementation of direct reporting procedures and
organising workshops on specific issues.
In February 2007 the NG-DR organised a Workshop,
concentrating on:
 building and maintaining of business registers,
 sampling methods,
 design of questionnaires, and
 grossing-up and handling of missing values.
The Workshop was considered to be very informative.
Eurostat invited the participants to contribute to the
creation of a virtual library on BoP/IIP collection systems.
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13. Revision of international standards
 ECB and Eurostat are members of the IMF BoP COM
and participate in Technical Groups.
 Eurostat and the ECB participate in the OECD’s
Workshop on International Investment Statistics and
the Benchmark Advisory Group and are in the process
of revising the Third Benchmark Definition of Foreign
Direct Investment.
 Eurostat actively participates in the revision process
of BPM5, MSITS, SNA93, ESA95 and BD3.
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14. Implementation of NACE Rev.2
The Eurostat BoP Committee approved the final
implementation plan for the NACE Rev.2 for BOP domain:
 First reference year will be 2010 and first data are to be
delivered in September 2011.
 Activity breakdown for reporting data on FDI is
modified to reflect NACE rev.2.
 Back-casting will be carried out for reference years
2008 and 2009 and delivered in September 2011.
Eurostat is preparing a handbook on back-casting
methodologies.
In order to assist in the implementation and the back
casting, Eurostat will organise a seminar in May 2008.
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15. Threshold for statistical reporting
EU Regulation sets a threshold of €12 500 below which
banks are exempted from reporting obligations for BoP
statistics.
Current threshold will be amended, as part of an
evaluation of the impact of the Regulation.
The main recent developments are:
 Evaluation is under preparation and any modification
is not anticipated to take place before 2008.
 The review may be influenced by the outcome of
initiatives to create Single Euro Payments Area.
 By the end of 2007, DG MARKT will decide whether to
raise the threshold to 50 000 € or to eliminate it.
The ECB has set up a task force to investigate the issue
of the usage of payments data for BoP purposes.
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16. Phare projects
 The purpose is to assist countries to attain better
quality of data and timeliness.
 End of 2005 grant agreements were signed for collecting
data on outward FATS according to methodology
foreseen in FATS regulation:
- Multi-country transition facility programme: HU, SK and LT
- Multi-beneficiary Programme: RO
 A new Phare Multi beneficiary Programme for HR and
TR started in January 2007 in order to assess feasibility
of collection of outward FATS.
 Final report expected by end of June 2008.
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Thank you for your attention
September 19, 2007
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