Werner Bier Deputy Director General Statistics European Central Bank

1. Briefing on the work of the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics- Envisaged Developments - Werner Bier Deputy Director General Statistics European Central Bank United Nations Statistical Commission 2011 Side Event New York, 23 February 2011

2. Overview • Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination • Status quo of official statistics – achievements and challenges • Principal Global Indicators (PGIs) • Harmonised reporting templates • Conclusions

3. Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination • The financial and economic crisis illustrated the degree of interdependence among major economic areas in an economically globalised world • Policy responses are still bound to be national and only in exceptional cases supranational (e.g. European Central Bank) • Multilateral policy responses are crucial for strong, sustainable and balanced growth • Enhanced and globally-comparableeconomic and financial statistics/indicators are needed

4. Multilateral surveillance and policy coordination • Group of 20 (G20) Leaders' statement from Seoul summit on 11-12 November 2010: Persistently large imbalances, assessed against indicative guidelines … warrant an assessment of their nature. … These indicative guidelines composed of a range of indicators would serve as a mechanism to facilitate timely identification of large imbalances that require preventive and corrective actions to be taken. • Main requirements for official statistics: • Comparable statistics/indicators for countries/ economic areas (e.g. public debt and fiscal deficits; private savings rate, private debt; external imbalance) • Easy accessibility of official statistics/indicators • Global/G20 statistical aggregates (e.g. G20 GDP)

5. Status quo of official statistics - achievements • Agreed and up-to-date international statistical standards/methodology (e.g. 2008 SNA, BPM6) • Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and agreed Quality frameworks (e.g. IMF DQAF, European Statistical System Code of Practice, ESCB public commitment on European statistics) • Decades of experience in compiling national statistics • Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) sponsored by seven international and supranational organisations (ISOs) and supported by the UNSC • Excellent international and regional networks and governance (e.g. UNSC, IMF BOPCOM, OECD CSTAT, CCSA, IAG, IFC, CMFB) and partly supranational governance (e.g. legislation by Eurostat & European System of Central Banks)

6. Status quo of official statistics - challenges • Statistical requirements should be agreed among ISOs • Flow of data from the various national authorities to the respective various ISOs is hardly discussed • Compliance of national authorities with international statistical standards is uneven • Almost no (timely) global/G20 aggregates (exceptions e.g. UN population, UN external trade, OECD GDP, OECD CPI, OECD unemployment) • Competition between commercial data providers and ISOs Statistics Departments

7. Principal Global Indicators (PGIs) The PGIs • Are developed by seven ISOs (BIS, ECB, Eurostat, IMF, OECD, World Bank and the UN) in the Inter-Agency Group on Economic and Financial Developments (IAG) • Focus on the G20 economies (and in the near future five additional Financial Stability Board (FSB) countries) and on key economic and financial statistics/indicators • Website http:www.principalglobalindicators.org/default.aspx is updated with statistics/indicators available in existing databases of the supporting ISOs

8. Principal Global Indicators (PGIs) The PGIs • Will become gradually SDMX compliant • Will be supported by visualisation tools (e.g. http:kosis.kr/http://kosis.kr/nsportal/bulletin/html/index_eng.html#) • Will be complemented by selected global/G20 aggregates (e.g. GDP growth rates) • May develop into a supporting tool of the G20 Indicative Guidelines

9. PGIs – Envisaged Developments The IAG enhances the PGIs by • Harmonising the (detailed) statistical requirements among the seven ISOs and across different statistics (a pilot project focuses on government finance statistics and its integration with e.g. securities issues statistics) • Agreeing on the PGI data sources/flow among the seven ISOs and thereby the responsibilities for compliance monitoring (e.g. euro area country > Eurostat/ECB > OECD, BIS > IMF, UN, World Bank) • Developing SDMX data structure definitions for file transfers (push mode) or downloading of files from ISO or country websites (pull mode) • Involving the G20 economies where needed

10. Harmonised reporting templates • The international statistical standards/methodologies need complementary implementation programmes i.e. reporting templates specifying the covered statistics/ indicators, their timeliness, frequency, seasonal and working day adjustment, etc. • The data templates should be designed as modular with a “Tier 1 module” for main aggregates and a “Tier 2 module” for detailed breakdowns; a further Tier module may refer to specificities of the economy • The coordinated implementation of the PGIs and the data template for a core set of high frequency indicators as discussed by the UNSC is such a short-term pilot exercise

11. Conclusions • Official statistics is called upon to support multilateral surveillance in a world of global imbalances and uneven global recovery • The international and national statistical authorities have the technical and organisational means to master this challenge by close cooperation • In addition to an agreed medium- to longer-term vision for official statistics, limited pilot exercises are needed in the short-term in order to exercise and prove effective international cooperation