Russian Federation: The Russian Practices for Encouraging Coordination between National Accounts and Balance of Payments to Produce Informal Economy Data

Source details

Canonical URL: Russian Federation: The Russian Practices for Encouraging Coordination between National Accounts and Balance of Payments to Produce Informal Economy Data

The Russian Federation describes a constant exchange of information between the Bank of Russia and the Statistics Service (which compiles the National Accounts and “Input-Output” Tables) to ensure uniform reflection of aggregates characterizing external economic activities across macroeconomic statistical systems.
Balance of payments aggregates include estimates of unobserved, hidden, and informal activities and are used by National Accounts (SNA) compilers to improve SNA aggregates and “Input-Output” tables.

Balance of payments aggregates estimated by models are subject to:
- Internal controls and reconciliation with other balance of payments components.
- Additional verification when utilized in compiling SNA aggregates and “Input-Output” tables.
When substantial imbalances arise between aggregates of goods’ resources and their use, SNA and balance of payments compilers conduct joint consultations and decide to:
- Adjust the respective SNA aggregates, or
- Correct the method and model for estimating merchandise imports not captured by customs statistics in cases of under- or over-valuation.

The Russian Federation uses the fundamental identity of the goods and services account as the basis for judging adequacy of modeled estimates:
- C = P – I – Ex + Im ± ΔSt
- C is consumption;
- P is production;
- I is intermediate consumption;
- Ex is exports;
- Im is imports;
- ΔSt is net change in merchandise stocks (in industry and trade).
The volume of goods’ resources supplied through imports that are unregistered by customs statistics (hidden and informal merchandise imports) is determined as:
- Im′ = C – (P – I – Ex) – Im ± ΔSt

Correction of parameters of the model estimating hidden and informal merchandise imports is carried out by balance of payments compilers based on:
- Comparison of coefficients for recalculating volumes of unobserved imported goods’ use from purchasers’ prices (retail prices) into imports FOB prices, with
- The purchasers’ prices’ structure (final consumption prices) for imported goods determined from constructed extended “input-output” tables.
Correlation between buyer (end-consumption) prices and basic prices for imported goods, calculated using data from extended “input-output” tables, is used to:
- Introduce adjustments in the average annual coefficients for recalculating volumes of unobserved imported goods’ use from purchasers’ prices into imports FOB prices.
- Use the obtained coefficients as basic parameters in the model until the next input-output data are received.

Data on exports and imports of “Travel” services compiled within balance of payments are used by SNA compilers to construct the use of disposable income account.
Treatment of household consumption:
- Expenditure on end-consumption of resident households within the Russian Federation is augmented by adding resident households’ expenses related to imports of “Travel” services.
- The result is diminished by nonresident households’ expenses in the Russian Federation reflected as “Travel” exports.
Deflator indices:
- “Travel” services’ exports and imports deflator indices calculated by external sector statistics compilers are used by SNA compilers for recalculating respective aggregates into comparable prices.

Starting with the 2011 data, construction of extended “input-output” tables is carried out by the Statistics Service with a periodicity of once-in-5-years.
The overall objective of the information exchange and comparative analysis is to improve the quality of both the conducted estimations and the statistics produced on the basis thereof.