MONGOLIA COUNTRY CONTRIBUTION PAPER “The Availability, Timeliness, and Quality of Rapid Estimates in Case of Mongolia” Presenter: G. Gerelt-Od, First Vice-Chairman, NSO of Mongolia International Seminar on Timeliness, Methodology and Comparability of Rapid Estimates of Economic Trends, May 2009, Ottawa, Canada 1

Contents 1.Legal framework and regulations for activities of the official statistics; 2.Role of the official statistics in the period of financial and economic downturn; 3.Frequency, availability and quality of rapid estimates: Practice of Mongolia; 4.Challenges encountered and some avenues towards addressing them; and 5.Conclusion 2

1. Legal Framework and Regulations As stipulated in Article 12 of the Law on Statistics, the NSO enjoys the following rights with respect to the coordination of official statistical activities: Provides unified professional management and coordination for official statistical activities; Makes sure that administrative statistics are not duplicated with official ones and the integrity of methodologies is ensured, approves and adopts indicators, methodologies, and instructions of administrative statistics, assesses coverage and accuracy of statistics; Improves methodologies for statistics and enhances their scientific basis; 3

1. Legal Framework and Regulations As stipulated in Article 12 of the Law on Statistics, the NSO enjoys the following rights with respect to the coordination of official statistical activities: Approves and adopts indicators, methodologies and instructions for official statistics; Develops and follows statistical indicators and methodologies in conformity with international classifications, methodologies and standards; and Establishes unified methodologies for national statistics in conjunction with relevant agencies and follows them; 4

2. Role of Official Statistics in the Period of Financial and Economic Downturn Wide-ranging monitoring of consequences of the global financial and economic crisis on country’s social and economic situation; Determination of impact of the financial and economical downturn on households, and population in poverty and vulnerable groups and real sector performances, Provision of high frequency data/information to the analysts and policy makers, and Early warning of the financial and economic downturn and ‘alarm system’ to prevent from further difficulties and consequences. 5

3. Frequency, Availability and Quality of Rapid Estimates: Practice of Mongolia An Action Plan for overcoming the current financial and economic turmoil adopted the State Great Khural /Parliament/of Mongolia, in January 2009 An Ad Hoc Committee with a function to provide efficient and timely management for the exercise to ease the financial and economic downturn, was set up in early February 2009 – Headed by Prime Minister of Mongolia; – With representation from government ministries and agencies, and – National Statistical Office, Bank of Mongolia, and Financial Regulatory Committee, which directly report to the State Great Khural/Parliament/. 6

3. Frequency, Availability and Quality of Rapid Estimates: Practice of Mongolia A Working Group under the Ad Hoc Committee assigned to timely and efficiently provide reliable and accurate data/ information on the financial and economic downturn was established by the Government of Mongolia. The Working Group is composed of heads of departments and divisions of relevant government ministries and other public agencies. The Working Group is convening on a weekly basis to analyze information and data received from relevant institutions on daily, weekly, and monthly basis, to exchange views on and review fiscal, financial and economic issues, and prepare and submit drafts of measures to be taken further by the Ad Hoc Committee. 7

3. Frequency, Availability and Quality of Rapid Estimates: Practice of Mongolia o The Working Group is collecting a data/ information on limited set of socio economic indicators from relevant government and other agencies, on daily and weekly basis. On daily basis: External market price on major export and import goods, Budget revenue, and Exchange rates. On weekly basis: Consumer price, Fiscal condition, Monetary and capital market, External trade, and Labor market. 8

4. Challenges Encountered and Some Avenues Towards Addressing Them Challenges Assurance of not only high frequency or timeliness of official statistics, but also comprehensive quality /reliability, comparability/; To determine and develop new indicators showing new social and economic phenomena and provide the government and other users with reliable and quality statistics – official statistics should expeditiously identify changes in society and economy in a particular time and statistics becoming necessary to users as a result of the changes and provide users with reliable and timely data that meet their needs rather than producing a limited certain number of indicators periodically; and To strengthen the national capacity, increase budget support, coordination and improve utilization of all available resources, 9

4. Challenges Encountered and Some Avenues Towards Addressing Them Gateways Statisticians should keep pace with the growing needs of statistics; Administrative information system should be supported by unified guidance and coordination, and centralization of responsibilities should be decentralized; Data producing institution should be supported and helped – advise them to employ the same concepts and definitions at the national level and to note sources, concepts, definitions and methods used if the same concepts and definitions are not applied; and 10

5. Conclusion When there is a rapidly increasing demand for high frequency and reliable official statistics showing changes in social and economic situation in countries due to the financial and economic downturn, capacity building of national statistical system is vital to the improvement of frequency, availability and quality of rapid estimates 11