1. Currency of Invoicing Andrew Kochen, HMRC September 2008

2. Currency of Invoicing EU Commission wish to collect Currency of Invoicing data from Member States, especially for the European Bank, so as to: Analyse international use of the Euro Have financial information re currency markets They are proposing to include this requirement, for non EU trade only, in new EC Trade Statistics legislation

3. Proposed Requirements Planned to be implemented in 2010 Data to be compiled for 2010 and then for every other year Results to be sent to Eurostat within 3 months from the end of the reference year Results to be broken down by Euro, US Dollar, National Currency and Other Results to be broken down by SITC: Section and subsection 33 (Oil) separately

4. History UK Trade Statistics used to publish a Currency of Invoicing series Primary users were the Bank of England and the European Central Bank Interested in the international use of the Euro Data Sources Non-EU Import customs data from system Non-EU Exports from customs data (pre New Export System) EU data from a small (voluntary) survey of Intrastat traders Changes to Customs system in 2003 reduced data and customers did not want to pay for additional data collection, so the analysis was discontinued in 2005

5. Last CoI table published Currency of UK trade for 2002 (percentage) Sterling US$ Euro Other Imports33 4222 3 Exports55 2717 2

6. Issues for UK Currency of invoicing is a compulsory field under Custom’s regulations for imports For exports, it is an optional field under Custom’s regulations and the UK has chosen not to collect this information So, for exports, the currency of information data must be collected by a survey or other method Strong commitment to reduce burden on providers (targets for each Department) Resource pressures

7. Options Make currency of invoice compulsory for Customs’ export declarations Setup a new survey Collect as part of an existing business survey Problems with data matching

8. Question 1. Is this a common problem? 2. What would you recommend?