IMF Capacity Building Program in National Accounts

1. IMF Capacity Building Program in National Accounts Kim ZieschangStatistics Department 2nd Continental Steering Committee Meeting, April 2-4, 2014 Addis Ababa, Ethiopia The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to the IMF, its Executive Board, or its management

2. IMF’s Technical Assistance and Its Institutional Mission • Domestic growth as well as national and international financial stability through design and implementation of evidence-based macroeconomic and financial policy • Member countries “own and operate” statistical systems to provide the evidence for evidence-based economic policy • The highest value statistical information for evidence-based national and international economic policy accords with international statistical standards • The System of National Accounts 2008 (2008 SNA) is the international statistical standard at the top of the economic data food chain.

3. Six 2008 SNA Milestones [1] • Milestone 1 - GDP by Industry and Expenditure in current prices and in volumes for the total economy, S1 • Growth analysis • Milestone 2. Milestone 1 + sequence of accounts through financial account for Rest of the world sector, S2 • Relations with the rest of the world (BoP) analysis • Milestone 3. Institutional sector accounts I: production accounts for each sector and, for General government sector, sequence of accounts through capital account • Productivity analysis and fiscal analysis • Milestone 4. Institutional sector accounts II: sequence of accounts through capital account for all institutional sectors • Broadly, milestone 4 is the minimum required macroeconomic data set for the IMF Financial Programming framework

4. Six 2008 SNA Milestones [2] • Milestone 5. Institutional sector accounts III: Sequence of accounts through financial account for all sectors • Growth analysis, BOP analysis, productivity analysis, fiscal, income distribution analysis and investment - financing analysis • Milestone 6.  Institutional sector accounts IV: Sequence of accounts through balance sheets for all sectors • Financing-debt analysis (Flow of funds) and vulnerability analysis (currency mismatches, maturity mismatches (roll-over of debt), capital structure (equity vs debt), solvency (assets over liabilities) • Data template for implementing Recommendation 15 of the (G-20) Financial Stability Board/IMF to the Ministers of Finance and Central Bank Governors of the G-20

5. IMF Technical Assistance [1] • Physical Presence • Technical Assistance Centers (9) • Five African Technical Assistance Centers (AFRITACs) covering 44 countries: Central (Libreville), East (Dar Es Salam), South (Mauritius), West (Abidjan), and West-2 (Accra). • METAC (Beirut) supports Maghreb and Middle East • PFTAC (Fiji) for Pacific Islands • CAPTAC-DR (Guatemala City) for Central America/Dominican Republic • CARTAC (Barbados) for Caribbean islands • Regional Training Centers (6) • Joint Partnership for Africa (Tunis) • Africa Training Institute (Mauritius) • Singapore Training Center (Singapore) • Joint China-IMF Training Program (Dalian) • Joint Vienna Institute (Vienna) • IMF-Middle East Center for Economics and Finance (Kuwait)

6. IMF Technical Assistance [2] • Missions • 219 travel events (272 mission-persons) in economic statistics for African countries in FY2014 (May 1, 2013-April 30, 2014); the great majority of these apply either to the 2008 SNA as a whole or to component accounts/sectors of the 2008 SNA • Types • Bilateral technical assistance services • Surveillance support for IMF country teams • Regional Workshops • Data ROSCs • Cooperation with Development Partners • Household Survey in Somalia (World Bank, et al) • Enhanced Data Dissemination Initiative for Anglophone Africa (DFID) • Africa Open Data Initiative (African Development Bank) • PARIS21 • AFRITAC and topical trust fund steering committees

7. Challenges and Opportunities in Africa • Key issues for national accounts improvement • Quality, frequency, timeliness of source data • New demand from central banks for timely, high frequency tracking indicators for GDP to support monetary policy committees: production indexes, forward looking indicators; IMF/STA is developing TA services to meet this demand • Institutional capacity to sustain source data flows • Key ingredients to success • Donor resources for statistical capital formation • World Bank, AfDB, bilateral such as DFID: human and nonhuman capital • IMF: human capital • National resources for personnel, other current expense, and maintaining statistical infrastructure • Coordinated effort

8. Coordinated Effort • IMF and World Bank broadly complementary • The Fund works primarily in developing the national accounts integration framework and in data dissemination • Compiling standard SNA tables using available source data, staff, and facilities, as well as maintaining dissemination standards and working with countries to enhance data dissemination (such as our joint work with AfDB on Open Data in Africa). • The Bank works primarily in developing the source data essential to the SNA integration framework, including on the supporting institutional framework comprising staff, technology, and financial resources. • However, both institutions work in the borders of these two broad areas, and going forward are working to more closely coordinate our work with our member countries and with other development partners, including the African Development Bank