Accra, July 11, 2017//-The Bank of Ghana (BoG) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) are at an advanced stage of the migration process into the sixth edition of the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual (BPM6).
The BPM6 which is expected to replace the existing fifth edition (BPM5) that was released in 1993, is prepared by the IMF’s Statistics Department to facilitate converting balance of payments and International Investment Position (IIP) data.
Like earlier editions, the BPM6 provides guidance on the recording of cross-border transactions and positions according to a set of internationally-agreed guidelines, and provides greater clarity and details on an expanded range of international activities that affect the IMF’s member countries.
Speaking at the opening ceremony of a five-day regional course on Balance of Payment (BoP) Statistics in Accra, the Director of Statistics Department at BoG, Mrs Grace Akrofi revealed: ” The Central Bank of Nigeria and Bank of Ghana are at an advanced stage of the migration process, adapting their data collection methodologies to the new Guide as well as broadening the scope of collection”.
While the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) and the Central Bank of the Republic of Guinea (BCRG) have completed the migration towards the 6th edition of the IMF Manual on Balance of Payments (BOP) and IIP and are currently preparing their BOP in line with the requirements of the new manual.
Mrs Akrofi therefore urged the other Central Banks to double up their efforts towards the completion of migration. “More efforts also need to be put in towards the implementation of the ECOWAS Monetary Cooperation Programme (EMCP) as well as the ECOWAS Single Currency Roadmap”.
This notwithstanding, the compilation of external statistics is becoming more complicated due to recent changes in the nature of such transactions.
For instance, there have been changes in the nature of institutional units; nature of current account transactions, and increase in cross-border financial activity, among others. Hence, monitoring and enhancing data quality in the context of such rapidly changing economies tend to impose heavy constraints on compilers of such external statistics, according to Mrs Akrofi.
She stated: “Another challenge is the need for timely, accessible and quality data dissemination for economic analyses and policy implementation. More timely, reliable data is needed in several key areas, such as the external sector. In the external sector, this type of data is required for assessing “debt sustainability”, for example, by focusing on external positions, external debt and reserves”.
The lessons from the recent global financial and economic crises also lend support to the fact that the provision of data by borrowing countries should meet global standards for the dissemination of data. In this regard, international institutions should enhance provision of comprehensive balance of payments data which, together with other external sector data, should be made public.
Being a Balance of Payments statistics compiler is a job requiring professional skills, not only for doing the task, but also to serve and communicate with the users.
Failure to appreciate the importance of the stakeholders often leads to poor collection, compilation and dissemination of external statistics, Mrs Akrofi noted.
To this end, this course is timely since it will upgrade the skills and techniques of Balance of Payments statistics compilers as well as users in our sub-region. It will also contribute to efforts towards the development of a harmonized balance of payments statistics in the ECOWAS sub region, she added.
The Regional Course on Balance of Payment (BOP) Statistics, organized by the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM) in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Statistics Department, with support from the West African Monetary Agency (WAMA) and African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) aims to get participants abreast with the revised system of national accounts (SNA) and Balance of Payments (BOP) compilation and the harmonization of statistical and analytical data at the regional level.
It also covers the linkages between these macroeconomic data sets. The scope includes; basic concepts, accounting principles, and methods of compilation/classification within the context of the new Balance of Payments Manual VI. I am certain, therefore, that your stay in Accra will be worthwhile, and you will be well capacitated by the end of the course.
Throwing more lights on the importance of this course on Balance of Payments Statistics, Mrs Akrofi acknowledged that external statistics, which consists of the balance of payments and other statistics, are among the primary statistics on which policy-makers and markets rely as a basis for their decisions in globalised economies.
“The balance of payments records the value of a country’s transactions with the rest of the world in goods, services, income, and transfers, as well as the changes in a country’s financial claims on, and liabilities to the rest of the world.
“This statistics on the external sector is key to policy makers, as well as analysts in the public sector, and indeed the private sector and international organizations. This is because external sector statistics assist economic agents to determine the link between the domestic and external economy, and the sustainability of the factors influencing external transactions”.
For example, a deficit in the current account of a reporting country implies that the value of its imports is greater than the value of exports. This has important policy implications. This deficit needs to be financed in order to maintain Balance of Payments stability, and hence economic growth.
Therefore, the Balance of Payments statistics are among important economic indicators used in analysing the performance of an economy, she maintained.
The Chief Economist and Statistician at the West Africa Monetary Agency (WAMA), Alhassane Diallo said the experience on balance of payments’ statistics is “particularly useful and rewarding in the sense that it fosters progress in the progress of migration to the BPM6”.
In light of these tangible results, WAMA, according to him would deepen its collaboration with the WAIFEMA, ACBF and the IMF on other key components of the ECOWAS Single Currency Roadmap, such as monetary policy frameworks, banking supervision, capital account liberalisation, among others.
In a speech read for the Director General of the WAIFEM, Prof Akpan Ekpo said since the inception of the institute 1996, it has successfully executed 591 courses, workshops and seminars which benefited 16,120 participants from the sub-region and beyond.
African Eye Report
