1 Regional workshop for African countries Admin Data in South Africa Statistics South Africa October 2007

2 Legal Framework For Co- ordination The Statistics Act (No. 6 of 1999) defines the role of the Statistician- General both as the coordinator of national statistics nationwide and as the developer and enforcer of statistical standards South African Cabinet approved the National Statistics System (NSS) in Jan 2002

3 Partnerships Education Reserve Bank Home Affairs Dept of Agriculture Minerals and Energy Labour Trade and Industry South African Revenue Service

4 Co-ordination of Economic Statistics Important Supply side co-ordination with Reserve Bank ( National Accounts and Selected Surveys) South African Revenue Service ( Business Register) Other players: Trade and Industry ( Systems of Registrations) Labour ( UIF)) Municipalities ( Financial Data for Government Accounts)

5 SARS 1999 – Amendment to tax law to allow Stats SA to access all tax records Independent Business Register ( co- operation of 4 government departments) Data Quality uneven Most important admin data – SARS – VAT data Key challenge – single business identifier

6 Key Objectives of BR Reliable data for estimating movements and levels Data to estimate GDP BR more challenging when it comes to estimating employment owing to lack of a single business identifier

7 Status Quo Pre Business Register Economic statistics dependent on a business register to develop sampling frames. Last economic census carried out in 1996 Business Address Register – A business population built up from various censuses Implications: from day one it became out of date and decayed rapidly How to compensate for new businesses

8 Improvements as a result of the Business Register Under the BR- there is a continuous updating of births. However, we do not have a source for deaths. The problem with the BAR – dead from day 1 while the BR is alive. The BR is built on the statistical units model – enterprises and kind of activity unit and a local unit. In practice, this is not very rosy. We have large businesses poorly profiled. In sum: BR is alive and a units model underpinning it.

9 Prerequisites for transferring from the Business Effective revenue service (strengthened in SA) Inhibiting issue is to resolve a number of sources ( match and clean inconsistencies in sources) No unique number and you get two sources- you soft match.

10 Challenges the lack of a unique identifier for each business when engaging with different government spheres enterprises have completely different and independent numeric identifiers in the systems for IT, Skills Development Levy (SDL), Unemployment Insurance Fund (UIF), PAYE and VAT.

11 Challenges Introduction of a wage remuneration as a stratification variable despite the absence of a single business identifier The most serious challenge – is business profiling – large firms in South Africa as complex as you can get. Effective survey feedback

12 Challenges Trade off between sustainability and coverage cannot fiddle around with coverage year to year as you have breaks in your series No administratively induced surprises ( amnesty) Business below the VAT threshold- reliance on income tax source – basic information on turnover