UNECE meeting on National Accounts Geneva, Switzerland April 2010 Herman Smith UNSD Response to the economic and financial crisis Agenda item 10

Introduction  Consultations on the Financial and Economic Crisis  The G20 Summit of April, 2009  International seminars organised by United Nations Statistics Division and Eurostat

Consultations on the crisis A series on meetings at the end of 2008 and beginning of 2009  2008 SNA the overarching framework for economic statistics, able to incorporates measurement issues arising from the financial crises  There was not a lack of information  Policy makers need the early detection of turning points of financial and economic trends  Remedy data gaps that the crisis has revealed  Improve the availability, periodicity and timeliness of high frequency statistics in accessible and analytically useful formats

International coordinated response  The G20 Summit of April, 2009 called for:  the UN, working with other global institutions, to establish an effective mechanism to monitor the impact of the crisis on the poorest and most vulnerable  the IMF and FSB to explore information gaps and provide appropriate proposals for strengthening data collection.

Inter Agency Group on Economic and Financial Statistics ◦ IMF (Chair), BIS, ECB, Eurostat, OECD, UN, WB established the IAG to coordinate work to explore data gaps and strengthen data collection ◦ The IAG Group addresses  key issues related to information gaps on risks in the financial sector,  data on international financial networks  vulnerabilities of domestic economies to shocks and  the development of the website on Principle Global Indicators (PGI)

International seminars on High Frequency Indicators  UNSD and Eurostat in February 2009 initiated a series of three international seminars.  The purpose of the seminars is to formulate an international statistical response to the economic and financial crisis for improved monitoring of the rapid and systemic changes in the global real economy and the financial markets and the impacts on vulnerable countries and population groups.  It is expected that the series of seminars will recommend an agreed data template for high frequency statistics, related metadata and related communication and dissemination methods and techniques

International seminars on High Frequency Indicators  The first meeting took place in Ottawa, May 2009, which discussed the development of a data template of high frequency indicators;  The second meeting took place in Scheveningen, December 2009, which discussed a global assessment of the Ottawa data template and the development of methodology and guidance on high frequency indicators.

Scheveningen seminar Five themes : ◦ the role of sentiment indicators in tracking economic trends; ◦ the role of composite indicators in tracking business cycles; ◦ flash estimates of gross domestic product; ◦ the analytical framework for assessing rapid economic changes; and ◦ communication and dissemination of indicators Outcome: ◦ To facilitate the work on the outcome of the seminar five work groups were formed

Work groups  The Working Group on Economic Sentiment Indicators will conduct a global survey on sentiment indicators and analyse existing practices. Moreover, UNSD will establish a knowledge platform on economic sentiment indicators.  The Working Group on Composite Indicators will undertake the review of existing guidelines on the collection, compilation and application of composite indicators. ◦ Colloquium – Sept ◦ CIRET – Oct 2010

Work groups  The Working Group on Flash GDP will advance the work on terminology, conceptualisation and purpose of flash GDP estimates.  The Working Group on the Data Template and Analytical Indicators will finalise the data template, meta data and related analytical indicators.  The Working Group on Communication and Dissemination will create a knowledge base and review the availability of existing visualisation tools and methodological guidance.

Third International Seminar on High Frequency Statistics  Fall 2010  Purpose ◦ Discuss the work of the working groups ◦ To prepare a report to the UNSC on  an agreed statistical framework of HFI  international comparability of HFI,  the related analytical framework for monitoring early warning and business cycle indicators  the communication and dissemination of HFI

Useful links Reports of the previous meetings:  Ottawa   Scheveningen  SNA News and Notes Issue 29 

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