Current Development Plans For Economic Statistics Timor-Leste Current Development Plans For Economic Statistics Fourth Project Support Meeting Bangkok, Thailand | 13 November 2017

Outline of Presentation What is the motivation of the project? What are you trying to achieve? What issues have you faced? And how do you intend to overcome them? What is your plan to progress the project (including timelines)? What have you learnt from the project so far? How does this affect RPES? (See slide notes below) How does this affect RPES? This slide varies depending on the nature of the presentation. For countries that are presenting on the projects not part of the RPES (Bangladesh, Lao PDR, Nepal and Timor Leste) the slide presents an opportunity to identify how the RPES could support the current project or how the project could be used to help other project country members – a case study for regional dissemination for example. For countries presenting on an RPES project (Bhutan, Cambodia, Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam) the focus is on “how do the lessons affect future project implementation”. This can be for your country perspective or recommendations for the RPES project and other countries considering similar projects.

Motivation / Achieve Motivation: According to National Strategic Development Plans (NSDP) 2011-2030, by 2020 an Independent Bureau of Statistics will be established. The General Directorate of Statistics (GDS-TL) is working under the decree law 2003, which is entitled to The Ministry of Finance. Current plans in the Economic Statistics National Directorate

Motivation / Achieve Achieve: To increase the quality of the official statistics in order to inform the policy-makers, private sector, NGO´s and media with high quality information To empower local staff and to build institutional knowledge. To interact with international cooperation under peer-to-peer basis.

Issues / Overcome Issues: 1. Issues in the National Accounts Units inside the National Directorate of Economic Statistics; National Accounts, BAS, Trade, and CPI 1. Issues in the National Accounts Internal issues of National Account: Reconciliation for the final results in order to reduce the statistical discrepancies between expenditure and production. Thus, we are developing the SUT. Doing macroeconomic analysis of consistency over the national accounts data.

Issues / Overcome Compile the deflators to derive the constant values of the GDP (p) based on PPI. Thus, we are working on PPI. Quarterly GDP: seasonal adjustment and benchmarking (high frequency indicators). Rebasing the National Accounts data: fixed base VS chain linking. External issues of National Account: Data gaps from some specific industries (i.e. agriculture) Political awareness in terms of reliability of the official statistics

Issues / Overcome 2. Issues in the Business Activity Survey (BAS). BAS frame (delay in receiving the lists of businesses from the Tax Office to build the BAS frame) Sample design: high nonresponse rates Improve the classification of the industries in the BAS frame Quarterly BAS (consistent to the annual BAS) Updating the BAS frame using the SBR. 3. Issues in Trade. Misclassification between goods description and codes

Issues / Overcome 4. Issues in CPI Learning on how to build CPI over a new information system. Since, Excel system is not sufficient to handle big data (i.e. survey data) CPI reweight: update the commodity bundle based on TL-LSS 2014, after that it is necessary to do rebasing and linking the different series together in order to obtain continuous series Given the local markets, traditional approach of price collection makes difficult to control the price change.

Issues / Overcome External Issues of GDS Low statistical literacy which tend to cause small demand for statistical products Hierarchical institutional arrangements make it difficult for GDS to coordinate technical consultation between institutions Trade between user needs and what statistical products have produced by GDS

Issues / Overcome Way to overcome: Expected Solutions 1. National Accounts Training the local staff with the assistance of international advisors in order to increase the capacity of the local staff : On-the-job training (learning-by-doing SOPs) Online training (basically provided by IMF) Formal training (in-country (ABS program ToT approach, and overseas : UN-SIAP, ABS comparative study) 2. BAS To identify whether the business is still in the operation or no longer exist, mostly for the construction companies (chief-check approach, given the information from lists and municipality offices) BAS frame and sample design capacity building with the international assistance (ABS) To build a system for BAS (Frame, Micro and Macro editing, analysis for the aggregate results) Statistical Business Register (SBR) will be implemented the following year in order to supply information for updating the BAS frame

Issues / Overcome Way to overcome: Expected Solutions 3. Trade 4. CPI Meeting coordination with tax Office to reduce Misclassification between goods description and codes 4. CPI Introducing new system for CPI (a more responsive system to handle big data) A training of trainer approach in order to delivering capacity building to the local staff Capacity building to the local staff in Dili including municipalities done by trained local staff Government through Ministry of Commerce and Industry should coordinate with the market coordinators and manager in order to get detail information on prices

Plan to Progress / Timelines

Plan to Progress / Timelines for BAS

Plan to Progress/Timelines-BAS Ad-hoc activities attached in the activities of 2016 onward. PPI will be implemented in the next year and will be attached to BAS, beginning with Construction PPI. Quarterly BAS CPI tradable and non-tradable (considering the large consumption of Timor-Leste are coming from imports) CPI based on the TL-LSS 2014.

Plan to Progress / Timelines for Trade Trade Publication in Monthly and Annual; Publications for last month are realized at the third week of the current month. Publications for last year are realized at the fourth quarter of the current year.

Plan to Progress/Timelines-CPI

Lessons learnt The quality of human resource is crucial for advancing the work in the area of Economic Statistics Technical assistance is very useful to support new initiatives. Technical assistance could be driven by institutional statistical priorities (ABS training support is one of the example in terms of capacity building leading by GDS).

Impact on RPES Lack of Master Degree and economist specialist for local staff on design progress and analysis of continuities RPES. Less Intensification on Progress integrations and application RPES with National Strategic Development Plan and SDGs. Uncreated Framework and standard of implementation, monitoring, evaluation on progress RPES in Country Level and Regional

Q&A