International seminar on Timeliness, Methodology and comparability of rapid estimates of economic trends 27-29 May 2009,

1. International seminar on Timeliness, Methodology and comparability of rapid estimates of economic trends27-29 May 2009, Ottawa, Canada Short term statistics and Quarterly National accounts Timeliness, reliability and accuracy 27 May 2009

2. The statistics of short term economic tendencies evaluation in Morocco come from several horizons at the national and regional level. They cover the various aspects of the economic and financial activities as well as their inter connexions within the real sector, the fiscal and financial sectors and finally the foreign sector. • The relevance of statistics for establishing national economic policies is an undeniable priority for the Moroccan decision makers. In practice, enhancing the consequent national statistical system is in progress and works aiming improvement and levelling statistics are implemented

3. Statistical system of the short term data in Morocco • Production process of the fast statistics to follow up the economic situation is articulated around three great types of information which are complementary one each others in term of time and functions: • Statistics of economic tendency • Business statistics (realisations) - Investigations sub annual -administrative records statistics • Quarterly national accounts

4. Business tendency ► purposes • Obtaining an economic tendency information which is not yet available in a quantified form at the traditional statistics level, • Allowing the public and private economic users to understand the immediate past, to apprehend the present, to anticipate the near future and to act consequently. ▼ to materialize those aspects: • The HCP carries out two quarterly surveys of economic conjuncture. The first one relates to the sectors of industry, mine and energy. The second concerns the sector of the construction. ▼ to enhance this process: • Attempts are in progress to set up surveys of economic conjuncture relating to the sectors of trade and services

5. ▼ The conclusions of these surveys aim to know tendencies regarding economic environment, production, demand, use of the producing capacities, investments, selling prices, treasury, orders, labour and stocks. Households expenditures pertaining to economic growth, like investment and export, so a survey of households tendecies concerning their appreciations and anticipations on climateconomic is currently carrying out.

6. Central Bank realise also, monthly and quarterly, a Business tendency survey; • Moroccan Centre of the Conjuncture (CMC), as a private institution, realise equally a quarterly business tendency survey. ► But sometimes data resulting from these various surveys are divergent, therefore user become stressed by reliability of these data especially in the crisis situation.

7. Business indicators The instruments to determine indicators of effective activity rely on results of the quarterly or monthly surveys data, and the statistics sub produced by economic institutions (Public administrations, companies, financial institutions, foreign trade). In a sectorial configuration, the essential statistics produced are: Real sector: Quarterly Index of industrial, mine and energetic production by activities is prduced according to NACE nomeclature. However, compilation of monthly index is already tried as needed by SDDS. however, the arbitration between its periodicity and quality is not clear since the answer rate decreases significatly.

8. Employment: • The labour market launches signals in case of recession or crisis. In particular, in urban environment seasonally adjusted quarterly unemployment rate informs about the activities in difficulties and makes it possible to detect their origins. Th quarterly national employment survey povide detailed data on uneployment, population occupied, jobs newly created by sex, age, education, socio professional categories, activities, etc. Prices: • The monthly prices indices of industry, mine and energy productions like those of the consumer prices , adjusted of seasonal variations, measure the impact of the effects of the swings of the raw materials prices like those of the impacts of the expenditure variations. • Construction: The building permits form the principal indicators for describing the sector of construction behavior . They cover the whole of the territory and the indicators of production are produced monthly. However the time of their release exceeds three months. The monthly released housing credits are considered to mesure tendency of this sector.

9. External sector: • Data covers imports and exports of goods and services, income, current transfers, direct investment, portfolio investment, other investment, and reserve assets. The shrink of The travel incomes, those of the Morrocan resident abroad and the increase in external trade deficit over several successive quarters were in some extent signals of crisis. • Financial sector: The main components the analytical accounts of Bank Al Maghrib (Central Bank) are the net foreign assets and the monetary reserve. • The daily indices MADEX and central MASI of the markets and that of the blocks make it possible to follow the performance of companies.

10. Fiscal sector • The Table of Treasury Expenditure and Revenue (in millions of dirhams) covers central government operations and the local government share of VAT revenue. • The Table records ordinary revenue, ordinary expenditure, investment expenditure, and the resulting deficit and/or surplus. It also records deficit financing modalities by source (domestic or external).

11. Statistics Periodicity timeliness

13. Towards a system of timely, reliable and accurate quarterly national accounts • Practically, the compilation of the CNT according to the SCN93 and the basic year 1998 started actually in 2005. Currently, the approach of production is applied given the availability of the necessary sub annual indicators, and a GDP breakdown by industries is obtained. However, in parallel works are undertaken to extend these accounts to the expenditure components, income and investment, financial and institutional sectors. This will require certainly the search for other data and the realization of other quarterly or monthly light surveys which would provide the adequate indicators. • The economic growth is approximated quarterly at the level of the principal sectors of economic activities. The overall quarterly GDP constitutes the aggregative index of economic evolution in the short term. It permits to know the possible turnings in case of recession or expansion and their rhythm ofevolution.

14. However, it always does not reflect the dynamism of the national economic activity given the frequent and important fluctuations of agriculture. For this purpose, we prefer divide the GDP in two components, agriculture and out agriculture, to determine the tendencies of evolution. • The quarterly accounts in volume are compiled from sub-annual gross volume indicators which are firstly adjusted seasonally, then an econometric method is applied to determine historic an current quarterly figures.

15. Special case of the agriculture • Its contribution in the GDP varies between 13% and 16%. dependently of the year climatic conditions and thus its high performance as its low one straightforwardly direct the evolution of the economic growth in a direction as in the other. Then, quarterly value added is calculated on the basis of preliminary annual estimate as well as on a quarterly time scale based on a quarterly structure of the inputs defined before by the Division of the quarterly accounts and the experts of the ministry of agriculture. We allot to each quarter a harvested production although this latter occurs during one given quarter. Employment in this sector is provided by the national labour survey carried out each quarter by statistics Directorate in both urban and rural areas.

16. Dissemination Morocco adheres to the special standard diffusion data of the IMF (SDDS) since 2005 and consequently complete the requirements of this one, in particular in terms of time. A timetable of diffusion is adopted at the beginning of each year and published on Internet which stipulates the end of each quarter like goes back to diffusion. A note of information on the results of the quarterly accounts is prepared and sent to the national press and is put at the same time on Internet site of the High Commission in the Plan.

17. Thank you.