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Bucharest, 9-10 April 2008 Marijana Bednaš. SLOVENIA IMAD Institute of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development OECD Meeting of Senior Budget Officials from Central- Eastern European Countries. Main activities. Monitoring and forecasting economic trends
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Bucharest, 9-10 April 2008 Marijana Bednaš SLOVENIAIMAD Institute ofMacroeconomicAnalysisandDevelopmentOECD Meetingof Senior BudgetOfficialsfrom Central-EasternEuropeanCountries
Mainactivities • Monitoring and forecasting economic trends • Slovenian Economic Mirror – SEM (monthly ) • Spring and Autumn Forecast (official forecast) • Economic Issues (assessment of fiscal developments) • Participating in government decision making • Slovenia’s Development Strategy • Development Report (annual ) • participating in key government bodies and documents • EU: Lisbon strategy, Economic Policy Committee • Research • working papers, Social Report (biannual ), occasional books • international cooperation (conference, projects)
Organisation • Over 60 people in 5 sectors • Horizontal working teams • forecasting • balance of payments • public finance • labor market and human resources • Project groups • Organisation is always partly result of reason and partly result of habits
Sectors • Macroecomic analysis and economic policy • macroeconomic policies • trends and forecasts of agregate demand components and prices • synthetical and ad hoc reports • Economic competitiveness and structural changes • analysis of competitiveness and its factors (RR, ICT, knowledge investment, unit costs, entreprenuership, infrastructure, regulations, environment) • sectoral trends and forecasts • structural changes
Sectors • Welfare and social development • social welfare and quality of life • reforms of the welfare state and social policy • long term sustainability • Quantitative analysis and national accounts • national accounts • economic modeling • Statistics • General services
Legal status • Office of the government, directly responsible to prime minister • formerly office within a ministry • director is a public servant, nominated by gvt for 5 years • Statutorily secured independence in forecasting and analysis • In reality, independence depends on • credibility • personality • competition • conservative communication
Legislation • IMAD is obliged by a government act, which defines its legal status, to make professional and unbiased forecast • Decree on the Documents of Development Planning and the Criteria and Procedures for Preparing the Draft National Budget - forecasts are prepared twice a year
Transparency • Transparency of forecasts is provided by detailed analytical explication and extensive statistical appendix • Realisation of forecasts is monitored through regular analyses, results published in SEM
Independence – validityassessmentofIMAD’sforecasts • A comparison with the forecasts made by other forecasting institutions repeatedly shows that the IMAD is successful in forecasting economic categories • Measuresofquality (the mean error - ME) for IMAD show thatthere’s no systematic divergence from the actual figures, whichindicates no-biasapproach (forecastsdo not systematically under- or overestimate the actual value of the variable)