ECB: ESS – ESCB quality assessment report on statistics underlying the macroeconomic imbalance procedure

28 June 2019

This fifth joint annual quality report presents a transparent description and assessment of the quality of the statistics underlying the MIP indicators. This report benefited from comments of the Committee for Monetary, Financial and Balance of Payments statistics (CMFB).

The report concludes that the macroeconomic statistics produced by the two systems are of sufficient coverage, comparability across countries, quality and timeliness to ensure an effective macroeconomic surveillance and therefore to support the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP), whilst describing areas for further improvement in each of these dimensions.

When looking at the quality of the statistics for the current cycle, the following main features are worth highlighting:  

• In the EU, a regular and comprehensive quality assessment of national GDPs is in operation in the frame of GNI being used for own resources purposes, of which GDP constitutes the most predominant part. In addition to that, the results of the second annual quality reporting exercise under the ESA 2010 methodology were published in December 2018.  
• In the compilation of Balance of Payments (BoP) and International Investment Position (IIP) statistics, asymmetries in bilateral flows and stocks need to be addressed, as well as the level and statistical properties of some national errors and omissions. The valuation and recording of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) transactions, positions and income needs further work to ensure an adequate and harmonised implementation of the statistical guidance. Moreover, efforts are still needed to improve the coverage of Special Purpose Entities (SPEs) and decisively address the outstanding inconsistencies between BoP/IIP and the “Rest of the World” sector in financial accounts.   
• Concerning unit labours costs, data are generally of good quality with some issues remaining, notably for employment data where time series present break flags for three countries and the national concept instead of domestic concept is used by one country.
• In terms of availability of data for Housing price statistics, one country does not deliver data as required by Commission Regulation (EU) No 93/2013 establishing owner-occupied housing price indices, with Eurostat continuing to use the Residential Property Price Index published by the central bank for the MIP exercise.

Certain areas for improving the reliability of Financial accounts statistics have been identified, including:

• the improved coverage of the liabilities of other financial institutions,
• elimination of some national inconsistencies between the annual and quarterly underlying datasets,
• the reconciliation of the “Rest of the World” sector in financial accounts with the comparable figures in the BoP/IIP domain,
• the reduction of discrepancies with non-financial sector accounts, and
• improved recording of the distinction between consolidated and non-consolidated data for the non-financial corporations sector.

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