UN’s International Recommendations on Distributive Trade Statistics

1. UN’s International Recommendations on Distributive Trade Statistics Eun-Pyo HONG OECD/STD/STES

2. Objective To inform WP members on UN’s IRDTS and on OECD’s collaboration to date on the IRDTS; To get WP members’ views on IRDTS and to reflect them on the IRDTS; and To identify efficient ways and processes of collaboration with the UN on the development of international statistical guidelines and recommendations, especially on short-term economic statistics.

3. Background August 2005: 1st EG meeting on DTS; November 2006: OECD provided comments on the 1st draft of IRDTS; May 2007: OECD provided comments on Version1 of IRDTS; June 2007: Version 2 of IRDTS is available for general public; July 2007: 2nd EG meeting on DTS to review Version 2; Feb. 2008: submission of IRDTS to the 29th session of UNSC.

4. Presentation covers Contents of IRDTS; Comments provided by OECD: - Overall, presentation or contents, services as a whole, recognition for other work, turnover, SA, short-term aspects, others; Draft version 2 of IRDTS; Organisations contributed for Version 2; Requests for STESWP members involvement.

5. Contents of IRDTS (10 chapters) Scope of distributive trade statistics Statistical and reporting units Main characteristics of statistical units Data items and their definitions Performance indicators Data sources and data compilation methods Seasonal adjustment Indices of distributive trade Data quality and metadata Dissemination 3 Annexes

6. Comments provided by OECD (Overall) IRDTS to be comprehensive, covering and discussing a range of issues. Recommendations are practical, especially when supplemented by the proposed manual and handbook (i.e. Distributive Trade Statistics: Compilers Manual and Indices of Distributive Trade: A Handbook of Good Practices). Many of the issues / comments raised by the OECD on the initial outline were incorporated into the draft text (provided on November 2006)

7. Comments provided by OECD (presentation or contents) Some sections aretoo detailed and can be incorporated into the planned Compilers Manual and A Handbook of Good Practices. Examples of suggestions: - performance indicators in Chapter V: to select a set of core indicators to be collected at infra-annual or annual frequency. - some of indicators in Section E (e.g. average turnover per enterprise, sales per retail sales space) can be removed; - parts of Chapter on seasonal adjustment can be removed.

8. Comments provided by OECD (Services as a whole) UN's partial approach of providing guidelines for the manufacturing and distributive trades sectors can be problematic. Some of examples still only cover the industry sector. Suggested to include a separate chapter for services statistics as a whole to deal with such issues as: - developing common questions for all services industries; - providing guidelines on absence of key information, e.g. deflators.

9. Comments provided by OECD (recognition of other work) There are still many instances where sources have not been cited in sufficient detail for users (though cross references to other documents). Providing more detailed source information enables identification of references that have been superseded, and is particularly important given that the life of the IRDTS is likely to be measured in decades.

10. Comments provided by OECD (Turnover) Need to develop a standard definition for “turnover”. Absence of an internationally recognized definition of the turnover, specifically in terms of component items, was a key issue for developing ISP Manual: - the solution adopted for ISP manual would appear to be a second-best solution.

11. Comments provided by OECD(Seasonal adjustment) To mention work currently being carried out by other organisations such as Eurostat, US Census Bureau, etc., To standardize the options being used in the application of the SA packages such as TRAMO, X12, etc. - Use of different SA options by both national and international agencies is one of the causes of the availability of inconsistent SA data at international level.

12. Comments provided by OECD (Short-term aspects) No specific attentions to the short-term aspect Recommendations, e.g. information to be collected, are not realistic or practical for short-term indicators as it is very difficult to collect all the necessary information. Some of the guidelines for the short-term statistics (i.e. monthly retail trade volume index) could be expanded.

13. Comments provided by OECD (Additional) A number of additional comments are provided in the body of the text

14. Draft Version 2 of IRDTS Available at: http://unstats.un.org/unsd/distributive_trade/distributive_trade_draft_documents.htm. Most of OECD comments are incorporated: - detailed comments, SA, turnover, recognition of other work: well reflected; - presentation, services as a whole: not really - short-term indicators: some To be reviewed by EG members during UN meeting in 15-19 July

15. Organisations involved for Version 2 AUS, BRZ, CAN, CHN, FIN, HK, IND, NZL, NOR, PRU, PLP, POL, RUS, THL, UKR, UK, US, a few other countries ILO, IMF, OECD

16. Requests for the STESWP members involvement To provide members’ views on IRDTS (version 2) by 10 July and to reflect them on the IRDTS; and To identify efficient ways and processes of collaboration with the UN on the development of international statistical guidelines and recommendations, especially on short-term economic statistics.