Draft Report on Responses to the Methodological Soundness Questionnaire

1. Draft Report on Responses to the Methodological Soundness Questionnaire OECD Statistics Directorate OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005

2. The MS Questionnaire: • Joint Eurostat OECD initiative. • Questionnaire designed to address lack of comparative information on country practices • Focus on implementation of EBOPS • Questionnaires sent June 2003 to all Eurostat member and candidate and OECD countries. • To be a snapshot of methodology in 2003 (methodology is evolving steadily) OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005

3. Structure of questionnaire • Refers to recommendations in MSITS and implementation of EBOPS • 15 sections • 1General principles (inc data sources) • 2 Transportation • 3 Travel • 4 Communication services • .. • 15 EBOPS extensions OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005

4. Current response availability • 35 country replies received to date (July 2005) • Eurostat 26 (24 members and two candidate) replies: No information yet from Cyprus • OECD (non-Eurostat part) 9 member countries replied: Canada, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Norway, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia and USA. No information yet for Mexico. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005

5. History of Analysis • Some partial analyses of responses to selected questions had been done by Eurostat, WTO/OMT, and OECD in 2003 and 2004 • Eurostat created Access database to store responses • Summer 2005 OECD in consultation with Eurostat completed the database with responses and did a full basic analysis OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005

6. Data sources • Number and variety of data sources (over 4 sources per country) – 2 countries list 10 sources, although subjective • For travel a majority of the countries use surveys e.g. of households, travellers, hotels, and/or credit card companies. 13 mentioned the use of a border survey of travellers. • Direct reporting of BOP transactions by large enterprises is also mentioned by a number of European countries. OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005

7. Some observations • Snapshot of situation in 2003 • Data sources question particularly useful • “Yes- no- partially” options are not always so informative or discriminative • Remarks are interesting • Database and raw responses are available for additional analyses • Useful reference document for understanding how data collected and problems faced in practice OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005

8. Future plans • Since responses to MSQ are a potentially useful source of harmonised methodological information for others • OECD proposes to seek written comments/corrections from countries and then make the report and data publically available as a resource for countries • Eurostat proposes to discuss the MSQ at BOP WG in October OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005

9. Questions • Request: comments on, or corrections to, the analysis undertaken [ by when] then make public – report, database and raw responses • Do delegates agree with this approach? • Are there further actions delegates would recommend regarding the report on the MSQ? OECD-Eurostat Meeting on Trade-in-services Statistics Sept 2005