Imports of services: correction

The CZSO, in the process of compilation of national accounts for the non-resident sector, comes out from the external trade statistics on exports and imports of goods. These data are also used as an information source for the current account of the balance of payments compiled by the Czech National Bank. The methodology of the external trade statistics is, however, in some aspects different from methodology of both the balance of payments and national accounts. The most sizeable difference consists in the fact that the external trade statistics takes for exports and imports of goods such operations when the goods cross the border while the key moment for the balance of payments and national accounting is the moment of economic ownership change. Before, this fact did not play any important role, but in the last years, especially in connection with the growing share of supranational economic groups in international exchange, more important role is played by cross-border flows of goods within these groups which do not entail the change of the owner. The whole situation is becoming complicated by the fact that after the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU imports and exports can be realized also by entities registered in the CR only as VAT payers, not performing any economic activity, and with growing share in imports and exports of goods. They mediate the imports of goods to the CR which in fact is neither used in production nor finally consumed but is only temporarily stored, completed and, subsequently, with various time shift, exported often at prices different from those declared at imports.

This problem was markedly shown in the Czech economy in 2009 when the y-o-y drop of economic performance was accompanied, due to the above phenomenon, by the export surplus. Since the CZSO comes out in GDP compilation primarily from the supply side, neither the level nor the growth rate of GDP were affected, but in demand side it was necessary to offset the incurred imbalance in the expenditure component “Change in inventories“ which is used in quarterly accounts partially as a balance item. Simultaneously with the imbalance between resources and their use in national accounts the problem occurred in the compilation of the balance of payments when financial transaction development did not correspond with real flows. It should be emphasized that this is not a typical Czech problem but it has appeared as a serious problem in other small open economies as the Czech economy is where the share of external trade in value added is relatively high. The CZSO has identified inconsistencies of this type, however, the scope of data deformation is impossible to determine without comparison of individual data from the external trade statistics with the data from value added tax statements. Not sooner than the last year the Ministry of Finance provided individual tax statements enabling thus to compare them with exports and imports data from the external trade statistics and subsequently to quantify at least y-o-y growth between 2008 and 2009.

Methodological change consisting in removal of impacts of the y-o-y growth of the above globalisation consequence between 2008 and 2009 has been implemented provisionally in the system of quarterly national accounts for 2009 published on 11 March 2010. The change subsisted in correction of the imports of services item as recommended by the working group set up at the OON European branch in Geneva dealing with detection of global phenomena in national accounts. The next step will involve the most precise quantification and the impact of methodological change will be reflected into time series of the national accounts indicators.

Household final consumption expenditure: correction

Data from household budget surveys are largely used for estimates of household final consumption expenditure in quarterly and annual periodicity. Those statistics supply the national accounts with data sources classified according to COICOP international classification. Recently, certain data, however, began to differ markedly from the supply side represented by the retail trade statistics. The reason might be smaller representativeness of surveyed households especially in quarterly periodicity. The national accounts department tested selected inconsistencies and decided to partly innovate the methodological process and include more statistics on sales in retail trade into estimates of individual household consumption expenditure, as it is usual in advanced statistics.

The specific change of methodology has consisted in identification of commodities in the structure of household expenditures which represent predominantly objects of the retail trade. At the same time, the development of data on sales of selected types of stores with certain product line were obtained from retail trade data classified by industries. Adjusted method of calculation is now based on data obtained, as before, from the household budget statistics (on goods and especially on services non-marketed in retail trade network) and also, which is new, on the use of data on development of sales in retail trade for products which can be assumed to be purchased mainly in retail trade.