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Technical Committee on the SEEA
Central Framework
The Technical Committee of the SEEA Central
Framework was established in March 2014 under the
auspices of the Committee of Experts on
Environmental-Economic Accounting. The Technical
Committee is responsible to advance the research and
implementation agenda of the SEEA Central Framework.
A priority of the technical committee’s programme of
work has been the advancement of work on the SEEA
technical notes. In particular, the Technical Committee
provides overall technical guidance to the drafting and
finalization of the technical notes by working closely with
the editor of the notes to provide technical input and
ensure consistency with the SEEA Central Framework.
The SEEA technical notes provide guidance to countries
on the steps required to begin the implementation of the
SEEA. The technical notes summarize in a concise
manner for a given topic the policy relevance of the
SEEA accounts, possible indicators which could be
derived from them (particularly those linked to the SDG
indicators), as well as data sources and possible issues
in implementation. The first batch of draft notes
including notes on water, energy, land and the
environmental goods and services sector (EGSS)
accounts as well as an overarching note on the
implementation of SEEA and the integrated statistics
approach are expected to be available by in the first
quarter of 2015.
Technical assistance
UNSD is active in providing assistance to developing
countries in developing capacities in countries to
support the
implementation
of international
recommendations and standards on environmental
accounting.
UNSD in collaboration with Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the
German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and
Development (BMZ), organized a pilot Training of
Trainers (TOT) for the worldwide implementation of the
System of Environmental-Economic Accounting.
Participants from fifteen countries and four international
organizations attended an obligatory online course to
ensure a common level of technical knowledge on the
SEEA.
The online course was tutored by an e-learning tutor and
accompanied by SEEA-experts from Statistics Canada,
Statistics Netherlands and UNSD. The course was
developed by GIZ and UNSD and was reviewed by the
Technical Committee of the SEEA Central Framework. The in-
person seminar provided a unique opportunity for participants
who had already acquired an understanding of basic SEEA
concepts to improve their knowledge through practical
exercises and discussions on issues in implementation.
Furthermore, facilitation skills including techniques to manage
group dynamics and meet learning objectives were part of the
training course.
The SEEA training course is the first step towards developing
a community of practice and sharing experience among
countries facing similar issues in implementation. The
interactive knowledge base on the SEEA which is being
developed by UNSD will facilitate interaction among
practitioners. The SEEA training course developed by UNSD
and GIZ has been replicated for English speaking countries in
Africa. There are plans to replicate the course in the ECLAC
and ESCAP regions in 2015. The online course will be
translated into Spanish in early 2015 to better serve the needs
of Spanish speaking countries.
UNSD has obtained funding for a 4 year project to implement
selected modules of the SEEA Central Framework in Kenya,
Malaysia, Uganda and Vietnam.
In order to assist countries in the testing of the SEEA
Experimental Ecosystem Accounting, UNSD under the
auspices of the Committee is implementing the project
“Advancing the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting in
pilot countries” in collaboration with the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Secretariat of
Convention on Biological Diversity (SCBD), with financial
assistance provided by the government of Norway. The
objective of the project is development of a national
assessment in the seven pilot countries, namely Bhutan, Chile,
Indonesia, Mauritius, Mexico, South Africa and Vietnam. The
project work in the pilot countries has demonstrated that the
SEEA helps in organizing and bringing together a number of
uncoordinated monitoring initiatives which are ongoing, by
using a common framework towards the development of an
information system for sustainable development.
To respond to increasing demand for training on the SEEA
Experimental Ecosystem Accounting, training materials are
currently being developed with the objective of increasing the
capacity of national statistical offices and other agencies to
test the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting, helping
practitioners not from national accounts backgrounds to
improve their technical knowledge of the SEEA and deepening
their understanding of the accounting principles and basic
data needs for compilation of ecosystem accounts.
UNSD has continued to provide technical assistance to
countries in the implementation of the SEEA-Water, including
Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador Mauritius, Morocco and
Peru.
For enquiries please contact the
Environmental-
Economic Accounts Section
at: seea@un.org.
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Gender statistics
The Statistics Division’s work on gender statistics was initiated in the early 1980s. The programme has been
geared to users’ needs, and has provided technical support to national statistical offices and women’s and
gender offices of Member States, in collaboration with statistical and gender units of regional and international
organizations and other partners.
History
The Statistics Division’s work on gender statistics was
initiated in the early 1980s, mid-way into the United
Nations Decade for Women: Equality, Development and
Peace (1976-1985) and in response to the call for more
statistics on the status of women. The programme has
been shaped by demands from four UN international
conferences on women and other conferences, such as
the World Summit for Social Development (1995) and
the International Conference on Population and
Development (1994). The programme has been geared
to users’ needs and has provided technical support to
national statistical offices (NSOs) and women’s and
gender offices of Member States, in collaboration with
statistical and gender units of regional and international
organizations and other stakeholders..
The gender statistics programme was designed to
address three main problem areas:
The need for national statistical systems to take
gender issues into account in all stages of data
production, analysis and dissemination and in all
relevant statistical areas;
The limited availability and accessibility of gender
statistics;
The under-utilization of gender statistics.
These problems have, to a large extent, been
addressed with activities geared towards the review of
concepts and methods; compilation and dissemination
of gender statistics; technical assistance; and training.
The success of the programme in responding to users’
needs has given the Statistics Division an unparalleled
recognition in this field, resulting in strong partnerships
with counterpart agencies and coordinated support for
the development of gender statistics.
Methodological work
The methodological work in gender statistics has
involved reviewing concepts and methods currently
used in the collection of official statistics, and
identifying ways of integrating a gender perspective in
order to avoid biases in the data collection,
presentation and dissemination. Several manuals and
reports have been prepared from these reviews.
Another aspect of methodological work is the development
of methods to collect data on particular issues of concern.
In this context, the
Guidelines for Producing Statistics on
Violence against Women: Statistical Surveys
have been
produced and can be accessed on line at
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/default.html.
The
Guidelines have been prepared to assist countries in
assessing the scope, prevalence and incidence of
violence against women. They provide methodological
advice regarding selection of topics, sources of data,
relevant statistical classifications, outputs, wording of
questions and all other issues relevant for national
statistical offices to conduct statistical surveys on violence
against women.
Also, methodological work in the area of time use has
resulted in the development and implementation of the trial
International Classification of Activities for Time-Use
Statistics (ICATUS) in 2005 and compilation of metadata
on
national
time-use
surveys.
(See
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sconcerns/tuse).
ICATUS is currently under revision by a group of experts
to ensure it is meaningful for a broad range of objectives
and can be used as a dissemination framework for time
use statistics that are internationally comparable and
relevant for both social and economic policies. ICATUS is
expected to be finalized and available to users by 2016.
In addition, in 2013, UNSD has finalized the manual
Integrating a Gender Perspective into Statistics
, following
the decision by the Inter-agency and Expert Group on
Gender Statistics and addressing the request by the UN
Statistical Commission at its 42
nd
session for the
development of manuals and methodological guidelines
for the production and use of gender statistics.
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77
The manual will help statisticians to: a) identify gaps in
gender statistics and develop a coherent and
comprehensive plan for the production of gender
statistics; b) ensure that survey instruments and
censuses will take into account gender issues and
avoid gender-biases in measurement; c) improve data
analysis and data presentation and deliver gender
statistics in a format easy to use by policy makers and
planners. The manual is available online on a dedicated
platform at
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/genderstatmanual/.
Compilation and dissemination of
gender statistics
The compilation and dissemination component of the
UNSD gender statistics programme aims at making
gender statistics and indicators readily available in
formats and media that are not only easily accessible to
users, but also well understood. Drawing from official
data collected from countries by the Statistics Division
and other United Nations agencies, a wide range of
outputs addressing different audiences and areas of
policy concern have been produced over the years.
The Division expanded its dissemination programme
with the introduction, in 1996, of an on-line resource,
Statistics and Indicators on Women and Men, which
presents the latest country-level data available in
selected areas of gender concern.
To further facilitate access to and promote the use of
key gender statistics and indicators, the Division
developed and launched a dedicated web based
platform for the
Minimum Set of Gender Indicators
(52
quantitative indicators grouped into three tiers and 11
qualitative indicators covering norms and laws on
gender equality), agreed by the Statistical Commission
in 2013 as a guide for the national production and
international compilation of gender statistics. The
platform is accessible since March 2014 at
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/gender/default.html.
Since 1991, another avenue of gender statistics
dissemination was introduced through the publication
The World’s Women: Trends and Statistics, 1970
-1990.
This publication and the two subsequent editions (1995
and 2000) presented a statistical analysis of the
situation of women in comparison to men, highlighting
gender gaps in various areas of concern. In 2005, the
issue focused on the progress made in the production
of gender statistics and highlighted the wide variations
in statistical capacity among countries. The 2010 issue
of The World’s Women, launched on World Statistics
Day in 2010, again presented a statistical analysis of the
situation of women and men, as in the three earlier
issues. The preparation of the 2015 issue of The World’s
Women
is underway and the Division expects to launch
the publication by end of 2015.
Technical cooperation and capacity-
building
The Statistics Division provides a variety of technical
assistance in gender statistics to national statistical offices,
regional programmes and United Nations agencies. This
support has ranged from organizing training workshops at
the interregional, regional and national levels to providing
direct technical assistance to countries, agencies and
other institutions. Since the late 1980s, the efforts involved
providing technical inputs, in partnership with other
regional and international agencies, in national and sub-
regional workshops to promote user-producer dialogue on
user needs, limitations in the concepts and methods, and
challenges in data collection as well as to enhance the
capacity of national statistical offices to compile and
disseminate gender statistics and more broadly to
integrate a gender perspective into statistics. In recent
years, the Division has focused on regional workshops on
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81
the integration of a gender perspective into statistics,
Time Use Statistics and statistics on Violence against
Women.
Another significant area of technical cooperation has
been in the implementation of projects at the national
and regional levels. For instance, since 2012, the
Statistics Division in collaboration with UN-Women, the
Asian Development Bank, the African Development
Bank, the World Bank, OECD and FAO is implementing
the EDGE project (Evidence and Data for Gender
Equality) aiming at developing international methods to
collect data on asset ownership and entrepreneurship
from a gender perspective. Several technical meetings
have been organized since 2012 to review available
research on the topics and discuss best methods for
individual-level data collection through modules
attached to existing/planned household surveys. Pilot
countries have been identified for the proposed
methodologies to be tested in 2014 and 2015.
Ongoing technical assistance has also been provided
upon request to institutions including United Nations
departments, funds and programmes, national statistical
offices and development partners, usually but not
exclusively in the form of the Division providing resource
persons for regional and national training workshops.
Partnerships and coordination
The gender statistics programme has evolved through
producer-user cooperation at the international and
regional levels. Much of the Division’s accomplishments
in this programme can be attributed to its successful
cooperation with and the financial support of various
agencies and development partners, including the World
Bank, UNFPA and UN-Women. Many of the Division’s
outputs and projects were developed as inter-agency
efforts and with the financial support of partner agencies.
The Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Gender
Statistics (IAEG-GS),
In 2006, the UN Statistics Division convened the Inter-
agency and Expert Group on Gender Statistics (IAEG-
GS) bringing together agencies’ representatives and
national experts in gender statistics. In order to
advance gender statistics at the global, regional and
national levels, the group recommended the creation of
a Global Gender Statistics Programme (GGSP). Since
its establishment, the IAEG-GS has helped foster the
development of gender statistics in countries and
globally, by developing manuals and methodological
guidelines for the production and use of gender
statistics, promoting training activities, data compilation
and dissemination and exchange of experiences and
best practices, and by improving international
coordination and a dialogue with countries in all
activities related to gender statistics.
Since 2006, the IAEG has met regularly to take stock of
and review progress, challenges and emerging needs,
and propose actions to advance gender statistics at the
international, regional, sub-regional and national levels.
In 2006, the IAEG-GS also agreed to hold a Global
Forum on Gender Statistics to promote and advance
gender statistics through the exchange of knowledge
and experience in this field, with a specific topical focus
each time. The Forum represents a venue for
statisticians, users of statistics and policy-makers to
assess the production and availability of gender
statistics and take stock of latest research and analysis
on gender issues. Since 2006, five fora have been held,
organized by UNSD with the support of the World Bank,
UNFPA, UNDP and the regional Development Banks,
including: the first one in Rome, Italy in December 2007,
hosted by ISTAT, the Italian Statistical Institute; the
second one in Accra, Ghana in January 2009, hosted by
the National Statistical Office of Ghana; the third one in
Manila, Philippines in October 2010, hosted by the
National Statistical Coordination Board; the fourth one in
the Dead Sea, Jordan in March 2012, hosted by the
Department of Statistics of Jordan; and r the 5
th
Global
Forum on Gender Statistics, in November 2014 hosted
by the National Statistical Office of Mexico-INEGI.
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95
Industrial Statistics
Industrial Statistics provide information on economic activity in the areas of mining, manufacturing, electricity, gas
and water supply and waste management activities. The historical scope of “industry statistics” as a measurement
of goods-producing activities continues to be an important part of the global economy alongside information on
other economic activities, such as the provision of services. Industrial statistics cover information that describe the
state and growth of goods-producing branches of the economy and describe the outputs of physical production.
Within UNSD, industrial statistics consist of methodological work, capacity building, as well as the collection and
dissemination of commodity production statistics and the index of industrial production.
Industrial statistics and the UN
The League of Nations was just about to take up
industrial statistics when World War II erupted. It was
only with the founding of the United Nations that
industrial statistics appeared on the international level.
United Nations involvement in industrial statistics began
in 1947 with the Report to the Economic and Social
Council on the First Session of the Commission. The
very first two recommendations of the Statistical
Commission in that report mandated the Secretary-
General to begin gathering national industrial
classifications and metadata and to collate it into a
report so that the Statistical Commission could prepare
a programme of work in the field. Once these
classifications were reviewed and a common UN
classification was created, collection and dissemination
of international industrial statistics could begin.
According to Michael Ward’s
Quantifying the World: UN
Ideas and Statistics
(Indiana University Press: 2004),
industrial statistics were a central concern in the post-
World War II era: “Countries firmly believed that
industrialization enhanced their power and status on the
global political platform. Industrialization, it was widely
thought, would win higher living standards for the
working classes by raising the level of aggregate
demand, increasing the total flow of output, and
improving people’s well-being through an enhancement
of their command over an expanded supply of material
goods and services.” Industrialization could most easily
be gauged through industrial statistics.
Work on industrial statistics within UNSD included the
production of world-wide comparable statistical
information and developing methodology for adequately
measuring the industrial sector.
An important part of this work was the undertaking of
three
World Programmes of Industrial Statistics
in 1963,
1973 and 1983. These programmes served as
benchmarks, provided a methodological basis and
practical guidance for data collection at the national
level and complemented the ongoing data collection on
general industrial indicators and commodity production
statistics.
Methodology
Recent methodological guidelines that have been
produced by UNSD include the
International
Recommendations for Industrial Statistics
(Statistical
Papers, Series M, No. 90) and the
International
Recommendations for the Index of Industrial Production
(Statistical Papers, Series M, No. 107), which were
adopted by the Statistical Commission in 2008 and
2010, respectively.
These publications define the scope and methods used
in industrial statistics for the collection of basic
economic
statistics.
The
International
Recommendations for the Index of Industrial Production
also provide practical guidance for the compilation of
the index of industrial production.
Industrial Commodity Statistics
One of the main focuses of Industrial Statistics is the
collection and dissemination of data (in quantities and
monetary value) on the production of major industrial
commodities.
This data helps policymakers, businesses, academics
and others to gauge both the levels of production of the
various commodities in each country, as well as long-
and short-term trends in absolute terms. The data also
offer insight into the major features of countries’
economics.
Data at UNSD are mainly collected through an annual
questionnaire, sent to national statistical offices which
gather data through industrial censuses and surveys.
The 2011
Industrial Commodity Statistics Yearbook
is
the 45th annual compilation and is based on the data of
the UNSD Commodity Production Statistics Database,
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114
which includes data starting in 1950. The
Yearbook
provides production statistics in physical quantities and
monetary value for about 620 industrial products. It
includes data for a ten-year period for about 200
countries and territories.
Data on a subset of eleven commodities is also
collected on a monthly basis and is published in the
Monthly Bulletin of Statistics
.
A revised UN List of Industrial Products has been in use
since the 2004 round of data collection. The revision
was the result of work undertaken within UNSD and in
consultation with a number of national and international
agencies. This new list is based on the Central Product
Classification (CPC) and enables the collection and
dissemination of new series of commodity data, such as
high-technology commodities and pharmaceuticals,
providing a better picture of today’s economic
production. The revised list also improves the links to
existing product classifications, such as the CPC, the
Harmonized System (HS) and the European Prodcom
list, thus providing data producers with a better tool to
identify the products in their national setting and
providing users with a better tool for linking production
and trade-related data.
The complete List of Industrial Products is available on
the UNSD industry statistics website.
Index of Industrial Production
The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) is the other main
focus of Industry Statistics within UNSD. The IIP is a
widely used tool to measure changes in the volume of
industrial production over time, and it is also an
important short-term economic indicator for the
estimation of national accounts at constant prices. The
IIP is also used by businesses and others interested in
measuring the growth of national economies. UNSD
started collecting data on IIP in 1953 and is the only
international organization that produces monthly IIP
data at the global level.
Guiding the IIP are the
International Recommendations
for the Index of Industrial Production
(Statistical Papers,
Series F, No.107), which have been adopted by the
Statistical Commission in 2010. The recommendations
provide guidance on matters of basic concepts and of
statistical practice to individual countries compiling, or
planning to compile, index numbers of industrial
production and facilitate conceptual comparability
between national index numbers.
IIP data are collected through questionnaires sent to
national statistical offices, and are published monthly,
quarterly and yearly in the
Monthly Bulletin of Statistics
(MBS),
the
UN Statistical Yearbook
(SYB)
and on the
UN Industrial Statistics website. Data are currently
compiled according to ISIC Rev.4, at the 2-digit level for
the industrial sector, comprising activities in mining,
manufacturing, electricity, gas and water production
and waste management activities. Monthly IIP data are
published at the Section level of ISIC.
The weights used in the calculation of the indices are
updated in five year intervals and the base year in
which the indices are published is changed at that time
as well. Since the July 2014 edition of the MBS, the
indices are presented using 2010 as the base year. The
SYB will use 2010 base year starting with the 2015
edition.
Capacity building
UNSD particularly supports capacity building in
industrial statistics in national statistical systems. This
assistance is typically carried out in the form of regional
workshops. The topics currently at the center of these
workshops include the implementation of the
International Recommendations on Industrial Statistics
and the International Recommendations for the Index of
Industrial Production and a series of detailed
workshops on different aspects of manufacturing and
business statistics.
Assistance to users is also provided via the Industry
Statistics Hotline (industry@un.org ).
Publications
The primary data publications of Industrial Statistics
are:
the
Industrial Commodity Statistics Yearbook
(covering a ten-year period);
the
dataset of Industrial Commodity Statistics
(covering data starting at 1950); and
the
General Industrial Statistics Dataset
(covering data for 1953-1993).
The dataset of Industrial Commodity Statistics is now
also accessible free of charge from the UNdata website,
at http://data.un.org/Browse.aspx?d=ICS
Monthly data for selected commodities and the index of
industrial production are published in the
Monthly
Bulletin of Statistics
. Annual data for selected
commodities as well as the IIP are also published in the
United Nations Statistical Yearbook
.
Contact the Industrial and Energy Statistics Section
for enquiries at: industry@un.org .
Website:
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/industry
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Measurement of International Trade and
Economic Globalization
At its forty-fourth session in 2013, the Statistical Commission recognized, in its decision 44/106, the need for an
overarching measurement framework for international trade and economic globalization. This framework needs to
address the growing concerns regarding the limitations of current trade statistics to inform the policy debate, since
current production processes are spread among many countries, creating not only economic and financial
interdependencies but also social and environmental ones. In order to better measure the various aspects of
international trade and economic globalization, data gaps have to be addressed, best practices developed and
additional conceptual development pursued. Among those aspects are value added, income and employment
generated from intermediate production in global value chains, intra-firm trade, foreign ownership and control
relationships, manufacturing services and transfers of intellectual property products. The traditional fields of
International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS) and Statistics of International Trade in Services (SITS) will need
to address the new demands and adapt accordingly its recommendations.
History in a Nutshell
Especially in the early sessions of the Statistical
Commission, international merchandise trade statistics
received much attention and exposure. At its first official
session (1947) the Commission recognized the need to
resume collection and analysis of international trade
statistics and established soon a Committee on
Statistical Classification which created the Standard
International Trade Classification (SITC) (adopted in
1950). At the same time the Commission requested that
Governments report their international trade statistics to
the United Nations in terms of SITC starting with the
year 1949. Furthermore, the Commission recommended
improving the methods used in the recording of
transactions in international trade. The next year (1951)
the Commission agreed on the principle that the
customs area, as defined by the countries themselves,
should constitute the basis for trade-by-countries
statistics.
The Commission adopted a number of key
methodological recommendations in 1953, which are
still valid today, such as the coverage of international
trade statistics defined as “all goods, which add to, or
subtract from, the resources of a country as a result of
their movements into or out of the country”, and imports
valuation defined as the transaction value, that is to say,
the value at which the goods were purchased by the
importer plus the cost of transportation and insurance to
the frontier of the importing country. At that time, the
Commission already recommended to also estimate
aggregate FOB imports for Balance of Payments
purposes.
Already in 1949, during its 4th session, the Commission
also discussed issues of banking statistics, insurance
statistics and distribution statistics. However, it was not
until 1989, forty years later (during its 25th session), that
it explicitly recognized that international trade in services was
a subject of increasing importance to users and producers of
statistics. Since then, things have accelerated. In 1994, at the
request of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD), the Commission approved the
creation of an Inter-agency Task Force on Statistics of
International Trade in Services with the objective of
elaborating the statistical requirements of the General
Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). In 2001, the
Commission approved the first Manual on Statistics of
International Trade in Services (MSITS) followed by an
updated version in 2010 as the international standard for
SITS.
International Merchandise Trade Statistics:
Concepts and Definitions 2010
The foundation of standards in IMTS was laid many years
ago by the League of Nations when it recommended
coverage to be determined by cross-border trade and FOB
valuation for exports and CIF valuation for imports. The
original concepts and definitions of IMTS were published and
approved by the Commission in 1954. Almost 30 years later,
in 1981, it approved the first revision in the
document
“International trade statistics: concepts and definitions”
(ST/ESA/STAT/SER. M/52/Rev.1), which incorporated the
concepts laid down in the Kyoto Convention to distinguish
special and general trade systems, as well as to define
country of origin. With the adoption of the 1993 System of
National Accounts (SNA93) and the 1995 Balance of
Payments Manual (BPM5) trade statisticians were requested
to bring the concepts closer to those frameworks. Confirming
its cross-border trade principle, and taking into consideration
customs regulations, requirements by WTO and, where
appropriate, the change-of-ownership principle of the SNA, a
second revision of the Concepts and Definitions of IMTS was
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117
approved by the Commission in 1997 and released in
1998. Practical guidance for data compilers was
provided in the 2004 Compilers Manual to IMTS. In
2008 UNSD issued the Supplement to the Compilers
Manual which discussed a number of measurement
problems of IMTS.
The Commission adopted in 2010 the revised and new
recommendations as contained in
International
Merchandise Trade Statistics: Concepts and Definitions
2010
(IMTS 2010) and endorsed the outline of an
implementation programme, including the preparation of
the revised IMTS Compilers Manual. IMTS 2010
contains clarifications and amendments of core
concepts (e.g., goods for
processing);
includes
new
chapters
on
compilation strategies,
data
quality
and
metadata; recommends
to compile mode of
transport as new data
item and to include both
country of consignment
for imports and customs
procedure codes in the
dataset for statistics; it
encourages countries to
compile imports on FOB basis (in addition to CIF) and
country of consignment for exports; further, it
encourages countries to identify re-exports and re-
imports, trade between related parties as well as trade
in goods for processing where no change of ownership
takes place; it identifies the linking of business and trade
statistics as an important area for both data compilation
and analysis; and includes a detailed description of the
relationship to the sixth edition of the Balance-of-
Payment Manual.
The cornerstone of UNSD’s action plan for the
implementation of IMTS 2010 is the update of the
Compilers Manual, which contains more detailed
explanation of certain recommendations and provides
guidance for compilers by describing good practices
applicable under different circumstances. In December
2013, the edited white cover version was made
available to the public at http://bit.ly/1y3VhR5 (IMTS:
Compilers Manual, Revision 1).
Manual on Statistics of International
Trade in Services 2010 (MSITS 2010)
The GATS negotiators and trade in services policy
makers need detailed and internationally comparable
statistical information on the supply of services by mode,
type of service and trading partner. The
Manual on Statistics
of International Trade in Services 2010
(MSITS 2010) is
based on the distinction of delivery of services in four modes,
namely: cross border delivery of services, consumption
abroad, commercial presence, and movement of natural
persons. Cross border delivery is mainly captured by the
more traditional trade in services between residents and non-
residents as given in the balance of payments, where the
Travel service item captures the consumption abroad. MSITS
2010 provides a more detailed classification of services
(EBOPS 2010) than the main services components of BPM6.
Correspondence tables between the various classifications
(EBOPS, CPC and ISIC) are provided online.
The Statistical Commission
approved in 2010 a program
of implementation for MSITS
2010 supported by a UN
Expert Group on the
compilation of SITS. The
program
consisted
of
strengthening the statistical
capacity of national statistical
systems
via
training
workshops, advisory missions
and a Compilers Guide with
practical advice and country
examples to assist in
implementation
of
the
recommendations.
UNSD maintains the TFSITS website, and is the editor of the
TFSITS newsletter. The latest newsletter of the Task Force
has been posted on the website in December 2014.
The Compilers Guide for MSITS 2010
The Compilers Guide for MSITS 2010 serves the purpose of
harmonizing and improving the ways in which statisticians at
the national level collect, compile and disseminate trade in
services statistics. While the international standards in
economic statistics are in the process of being implemented,
this Guide comes timely, providing the statistical community
with guidelines, best practices, case studies, and practical
advice on the compilation of the trade in services statistics.
These statistics consist of transactions between residents
and non-residents in services classified by the Extended
Balance of Payments Services (EBOPS) categories and by
the country of residency; they also include foreign affiliates
statistics (FATS) and statistics on modes of supply. The
overarching aim of this Guide is to increase the availability
and quality of these statistics in order to fulfil the urgent
needs and demands for such data by policy makers,
researchers, market analysts and the public in general.
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The unedited white cover version is available in pdf at
http://bit.ly/1HvsILY
Working for and with the countries
UNSD undertakes capacity development through
workshops and country projects in collaboration with
other international organizations. Examples of recent
workshops on the compilation of IMTS, trade in services
statistics and measurement of trade and economic
globalization are:
Regional Seminar on International Trade
Statistics, New Delhi, 3-6 November 2014
International conference on the
measurement of trade and economic
globalization, Aguascalientes, Mexico, 29
September - 2 October 2014
Regional Seminar on International Trade
Statistics: Implementation of
Recommendations, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia,
12-16 May 2014
International Seminar on Trade and Tourism
Statistics, Jakarta, Indonesia, 7-10 October
2013
Regional Workshop on Travel and
International Tourism Consumption, 14–17
May 2013, Roseau, Dominica
Regional workshop on IMTS:
Implementation of IMTS 2010 and a new
vision for trade statistics, Rabat, Morocco,
22 – 26 April 2013
Regional seminar on international trade
statistics for Latin American countries,
Bogota, Colombia, 11-14 December 2012
During 2015 UNSD will organize more workshops for
developing countries, within the overall framework of
2008 SNA implementation, and will continue working
together with countries to support the implementation of
IMTS 2010 and MSITS 2010, including the compilation
of international trade indices, implementation of
statistical business register, the linking of trade and
business statistics, FATS, FDI and the improvement of
trade data quality and metadata.
SITC, HS, CPC and BEC
Throughout its history the commodity classifications
have been the common language in trade statistics. The
best illustration of this importance was given by the fact
that most of the report of the sixth session of the
Commission in 1951 consisted of the complete description of
the original Standard International Trade Classification
(SITC). From 1973 until 1985, the Customs Co-operation
Council (now known as World Customs Organization)
developed the Harmonized Commodity Description and
Coding System (HS) which became so widely used by the
Customs administrations around the globe that in 1993 the
Commission recommended its use as the principal tool for
collection of trade data. Given the central role of HS, the new
revisions of the SITC are created using HS subheadings as
building blocks. Also the Central Product Classification (CPC),
which is used for trade and production statistics, stays close
to definitions used in the latest version of HS.
As part of its regular work programme, the Statistics Division
provides
correlation
and
conversion tables between the
latest version of HS (currently the
2012 version) and earlier versions
of HS and other commodity
classifications.
The Classification by Broad
Economic Categories (BEC) is
currently being revised to better
reflect current economic reality
and by extending its scope,
including services as well as goods, while
giving extra attention to the definition of products for
intermediate consumption.
UN International Trade Statistics
Knowledgebase
UNSD has developed a
knowledge base on IMTS and
SITS where users can access
information related to concepts,
definitions, and compilation practices. The knowledgebase is
regularly updated with Q & A information received from
interactions with the users and from relevant methodological
documentation published by countries or international
organizations. Both knowledge bases on trade in goods and
trade in services are accessible through a single portal at:
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/tradekb/Knowledgebase/
UN Comtrade database
During the sixties the Statistics Division created a center for
the collection and publication of international data on external
trade. This center received detailed trade-by-commodity-by-
country statistics from many governments on the basis of
SITC, Revised, and utilized a mainframe computer to convert
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110
the data into US dollars, metric units of quantity, and
standard commodity and country codes. This mainframe
was operational until the end of 2005. Improved
technology and cheaper storage space, helped to move
this database, commonly known as UN Comtrade, from
the mainframe to a server, making it easily available for
all interested users around the world through the
Internet. UN Comtrade contains more than 50 years of
detailed trade data for over 180 countries or areas. For
its design and accessibility, UNSD received the 2005
UN21 Award. In 2012, UNSD released UN Monthly
Comtrade, a new processing and dissemination system
for detailed monthly merchandise trade statistics. In
addition, UNSD formally launched a major project to
update UN Comtrade, whose main objectives are: (i) to
significant enhance metadata, (ii) to include the new
data variables recommended in IMTS 2010, (iii) to
integrate annual and monthly data into a unified
collection, processing and dissemination environment,
and (iv) to design and implement global trade SDMX 2.1
(data and metadata structure definition). Moreover, the
technology behind UN Comtrade will be significantly
upgraded to improve functionality and user experience.
In February 2014, Comtrade Labs and a new data
extraction interface for UN Comtrade were released.
Comtrade Labs is a place to showcase innovative uses
of UN Comtrade data, especially visualizations and tools
for mass data extraction, see http://comtrade.un.org.
UN Service Trade: Global Database of
Trade in Services Statistics
In 2003, the statistical community agreed that UNSD,
using its experience with the UN Comtrade database,
would create a database for international trade in
services in accordance with MSITS, including trade by
service category (EBOPS classification) and partner
country. UN ServiceTrade is publicly available on the
internet and contains currently data for almost all UN
member countries covering the years 2000 to 2013 (it is
available at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/service trade).
International Trade Statistics Yearbook,
Volume I
–
Trade by Country and
Volume II
–
Trade by Product
The International Trade Statistics Yearbook provides an
overview of the latest trends of trade in goods and
services of most countries and areas in the world. The
publication is aimed at both specialist trade data users
and common audience at large. The presented data,
charts and analyses will benefit policy makers, government
agencies, civil society organizations, journalists, researchers,
students, businesses and anyone who is interested in trade
issues. The yearbook contains detailed world data tables on
merchandise trade, country trade, commodity trade and
services trade profiles for
most countries and areas in
the world. The profiles offer
an
insight
into
the
merchandise and services
trade
performance
of
individual countries and
areas by means of brief
descriptive text, concise data
tables and charts using latest
available data. The yearbook
is also made available online
at http://comtrade.un.org/pb.
Friends of the Chair Group on
International Trade and Economic
Globalization
At the Statistical Commission in 2013, a report on
International Trade Statistics (E/CN.3/2013/7) was presented
which gave an overview of topics in this area, such as
integrated economic statistics, linking trade and business
statistics, trade and
global production,
trade in value
added, statistics of
multinational
enterprises
and
foreign
direct
investment.
The
report described
the
policy
questions
regarding international trade in a world in which production
processes are spread among many countries creating not
only economic and financial interdependencies but also
social and environmental ones, and then highlighted the
growing concerns regarding the limitations of current trade
statistics to inform the policy debate.
The Commission recognized the need for a new framework
and agreed to the creation of a “friends of the chair” (FOC)
group tasked with preparing a concept paper on the scope
and content of the framework (Decision 44/106 in E/2013/24),
and on the appropriate mechanism for coordination. The first
meeting of FOC group took place in New York in November
2013 followed by a meeting in Aguascalientes in 2014. The
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