Download Progress Report on the Review of the SNA

Globalization:
A Progress Report
For Information
AEG Meeting
January 30-February 8, 2006
Introduction
• December 2004 AEG
– Expressed interest in including a discussion of
the statistical challenges of multinational
enterprises within the context of globalization
in the updated SNA
– Work to be carried forward by a subgroup
• Group on Globalization met in Bangkok,
aiming toward a modest amount of new
text drawing on evolving literature
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Toward an outline
• A draft annotated outline was circulated
within the Group
• The attached outline is the current state of
thinking
• The outline will evolve:
– Comments by AEG
– One-day session at the joint national accounts
meeting in Geneva, April 25-28, 2006
– Ongoing work on the Benchmark Definition of
Foreign Direct Investment
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Draft outline
• Definition and characterization of globalization,
with key role of multinational enterprises
• Challenge of globalization to NAs:
– Accounting: complexity of recording a variety of stocks
and flows and relating them to units, using examples
such as goods for processing, merchanting, SPEs,
non-permanent workers
– Source data issues: for example, transfer pricing,
multinationals, free zones, with general concern about
consistency of the several sets of data
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Draft outline (2)
• Challenges of globalization to NAs:
Conceptual issues: examples
– Globalization points to the analytical
usefulness of ownership- or control-based
statistics to supplement traditional statistics on
cross-border transactions and positions.
– R&D: accounting is complex in a closed
economy, but the complexity is multiplied in
an international context
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Questions to the AEG
1. Does the draft outline capture the main topics for a
modest amount of new text in Rev. 1 about globalization
in general and multinational enterprises in particular?
What is missing? What should be added?
2. If two, perhaps three, issues dealt with in the SNA
Update were to be described briefly to illustrate the
accounting challenges stemming from globalization (see
section II.A), which should they be?
3. Is it appropriate to mention ownership- or control-based
statistics as complements of traditional statistics on
cross-border flows and positions such as balance of
payments and the external sector of national accounts?
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Thank you
Contact:: [email protected]
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