Informal Economy Data: Compilation Practices

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A leading cause of coverage gaps in the international accounts (balance of payments and international investment position (IIP)) is the omission of activities outside the scope of national data collection and compilation systems.
Such omitted activities may be conducted in the informal sector, may exist underground, and/or may be illegal—with the boundaries among these activities usually overlapping.
These omissions pose challenges for compilers of the international accounts and lead to issues of consistency and comparability of measurements across economies, and across macroeconomic datasets for an economy.

The IMF Committee on Balance of Payments Statistics supported the establishment of a Task Force on the Informal Economy (TFIE) at its meeting of October 2017.
The TFIE work was centered on identifying “encouraged practices” in data compilation of informal, underground, and illegal activities, building on the conceptual frameworks defined by different international organizations.
The TFIE conducted a two-year work program to address coverage data gaps in informal, underground, and illegal activities in the international accounts.

The results of the TFIE’s two-year work are presented as compilations of information on the compilation practices of selected economies.
The information covers collection and compilation techniques used by these economies to estimate informal, underground, and/or illegal cross-border transactions and positions in their international accounts.
The TFIE produced TFIE Phase 1 Report and TFIE Phase 2 Report as part of its outputs.

The objective of disseminating the TFIE results is to provide a knowledge exchange resource tool for national compilers to benefit from the experiences of their peers.
This knowledge exchange is intended to augment the capacity development program in macroeconomic statistics offered by the International Monetary Fund.