Updating the 1993 SNA

Anne Harrison

Editor of the update

Anne.harrison@oecd.org

Overview only

• Full documentation on UN web site

• http://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/snarev1.asp

Recommendations

• Topic-specific expert groups

• 44 issues

• AEG has had four meetings

• Full list of provisional recommendations

And..

• Clarifications

• Consistency issues

Pensions

• Funded pension schemes• Show liabilities of schemes (not just

assets)• Contributions of employer and employee

represent pension entitlement earned in a year

• For defined benefit schemes, property income represents increase in past pension entitlement during the year

Problem area

• Unfunded schemes of government

• Difficulty of separating from social security

• May go with supplementary table to permit some latitude in application of recommendations

Non-financial assets

• R&D – Frascati data to be treated as fixed capital

• Capital services

• Contracts, leases and licences

• Intangible assets – capture of ”excess profits” from imperfect market brought about by restrictions

Financial services

• FISIM – withdraw option not to allocate

• Use a reference rate

• Allow service on lending of own funds including money lenders

• Buy/sell margins on dealing in securities and equities

Insurance

• Use expected claims not actual and smooth premium supplements also

• Have a link to monetary and financial statistics

Government

• New chapter on government and public sectors

• Delineation of units under control of govt

• Greater precision on ”economically significant prices”

• Guarantees

• PPP

Rest of the world

• Goods for processing – goods enter and then leave country without changing ownership

• Change to follow strictly change of ownership principle ie no imports and exports recorded for original value, difference is shown as processing fee

• Apply to inter-establishment deliveries only

Merchanting

• Goods bought and then sold without physically entering the country

• Show as negative exports and then positive exports (at a higher value)

• Parallel with domestic wholesale and retail

• May have inventories held in ROW

Units

• Units with no physcial presence or employees

• Government SPVs

• Holding companies

Developing country concerns

• Globalisation

• Informal economy

• Migrant workers and international remittances

• NPIs and their role in international relief efforts

• Debt concessionality and restructuring

1993 SNA Rev1

Will I recognise the book?

Part 1 Introduction and overviewPart 2 Accounting conventions

• 1 Introduction

• 2 Overview

• 3 Flows, stocks and accounting rules

• 4 Institutional units and sectors

• 5 Establishments and industries

Part 3 The sequence of accounts

• 6 The production account

• 7 The distribution of primary income account

• 8 The secondary distribution of income account

• 9 The use of income account

Part 3 cont

• 10 The capital account

• 11 The financial account

• 12 Other changes in assets accounts

• 13 The balance sheet

Part 4: Integration and elaboration of the accounts

• 14 Typical summary presentations

• 15 Supply and use tables and input-output

• 16 Prices and volumes measures

• 17 The role of capital services in the accounts

• 18 Cross-cutting and other special issues

Part 5: Interpretation of the accounts and extensions

• 19 Measuring corporate activity

• 20 The government and public sectors

• 21 Non-profit institutions in the System

• 22 Households

• 23 The informal sector

• 24 The rest of the world account (external transactions account)

Part 5 cont

• 25 The link to financial and monetary statistics

• 26 Population and labour inputs

• 27 Satellite accounts and other extensions of the System

• Annex 1: Classifications

• Annex2: Accounts

Electronic annexes

• Multiple exchange rates

• PPPs

• Changes since 1993

• ?Input-output