This Manual provides guidance to compilers of national accounts on the concepts, data sources, and compilation methods required for development of a system of quarterly national accounts. More and more countries are recognizing that quarterly national accounts are an essential tool for management and analysis of their economy. The Manual is intended particularly for compilers who already have a knowledge of annual national accounting concepts and methods, and provides techniques for the development of a consistent time series of annual and quarterly accounts. It serves as acomplement to the System of National Accounts 1993, which has only a limited discussion of quarterly accounts, and will also prove useful as a tool for sophisticated users of quarterly national accounts.

The Quarterly National Accounts Manual (the Manual) provides conceptual and practical guidance for compiling quarterly national accounts (QNA) statistics. The Manual offers a comprehensive review of data sources, statistical methods, and compilation techniques to derive official estimates of quarterly GDP. The new edition—which upgrades the first edition, published in 2001—improves and expands the previous content based on recent methodological advances, best country practices, and suggestions received from QNA compilers and experts.

The Quarterly National Accounts Manual (the Manual) provides conceptual and practical guidance for compiling quarterly national accounts (QNA) statistics. The Manual offers a comprehensive review of data sources, statistical methods, and compilation techniques to derive official estimates of quarterly GDP. The new edition--which upgrades the first edition, published in 2001--improves and expands the previous content based on recent methodological advances, best country practices, and suggestions received from QNA compilers and experts.

This joint publication of the United Nations, the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the World Bank reflects the changes and improvements that have been introduced to the System of National Accounts since its most recent revision in 1993. The System of National Accounts 2008 (2008 SNA) is a statistical framework that provides a comprehensive, consistent and flexible set of macroeconomic accounts for policymaking, analysis and research purposes. The 2008 SNA is expected to receive distinguished attention not only from professionals practicing in the field of national accounts but policy makers, analysts, academia and a broad range of users who rely on macroeconomic information obtainable from the updated system of accounts. It also provides an overarching framework for standards in other domains of economic statistics, facilitating the integration of these statistical systems to achieve consistency with national accounts. The publication that contains the 2008 SNA has been substantially updated from its previous version as a result of a multiyear collaborative project. Annex 3 of the publication provides a detailed description of the new features of the 2008 SNA. The 2008 SNA will support the implementation of international standards in national accounting and provide the methodological basis for improving the international comparability of national accounts data. When adopting the 2008 SNA as the updated new standard of national accounting, the United Nations Statistical Commission encouraged all countries to compile and report their national accounts on the basis of the 2008 SNA as soon as possible. The publication also provides practical new tools to complement the previously published version: a glossary of SNA terms and definitions and a comprehensive index.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) launched the data standards initiatives to enhance member countries’ data transparency and to promote their development of sound statistical systems. The need for data standards was highlighted by the financial crises of the mid-1990s, in which information deficiencies were seen to play a role. Under the data standards initiatives, the IMF established the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) in 1996 to provide guidance to countries that have or seek access to capital markets to disseminate key data so that users in general, and financial market participants in particular, have adequate information to assess the economic situations of individual countries. The SDDS not only prescribes that subscribers disseminate certain data categories, but also prescribes that subscribers disseminate the relevant metadata to promote public knowledge and understanding of their compilation practices with respect to the required data categories. In 1997, the IMF introduced under the initiatives the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) to provide a framework for countries that aim to develop their statistical systems, within which they can work toward disseminating comprehensive and reliable data and, eventually, meet SDDS requirements. At the Eighth Review of the Fund’s Data Standards Initiatives in February 2012, the IMF’s Executive Board approved the SDDS Plus as an upper tier of the Fund’s data standards initiatives. The SDDS Plus is open to all SDDS subscribers and is aimed at economies with systemically important financial sectors.

The IMF's work on data dissemination standards consists of two tiers: the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS), which applies to all IMF member countries, and the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), for those members having or seeking access to international capital markets. The GDDS framework provide governments with guidance on the overall development of the macroeconomic, financial, and sociodemographic data that are essential for policymaking and analysis in an environment that increasingly requires relevant, comprehensive, and accurate statistical data. This Guide explains the nature, objectives, and operation of the GDDS; the data dimensions it covers; and how countries participate. It provides national statistical authorities with a management tool and a framework to foster sound statistical methodology, professional data compilation, and data dissemination. The Guide supersedes the version updated in March 2002 and incorporates the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as specific elements of the GDDS sociodemographic component, which was articulated with the collaboration of the World Bank.

The principles underlying the recording of changes in inventories are explained in the System of National Accounts, 1993 (1993 SNA), but operational guidelines on their measurement are lacking. This paper elaborates specific statistical techniques and their underlying assumptions for calculating changes in inventories and holding gains when only data on stocks of inventories are available. Several data situations are considered. The authors propose methods for measuring changes in inventories that meet the 1993 SNA principles. The paper also explores possibilities for implementing the proposed improvements and explains the interpretation of data on changes in inventories.

This paper focuses on several IMF publications published in the winter of year 2018. Realizing Indonesia’s Economic Potential book uncovers some of the forces that are likely to shape Indonesia’s economy. It analyses the constraints to growth, propose options to boost economic growth, and explore key issues policymakers will need to handle in the future. The ASEAN Way: Sustaining Growth and Stability book provides a comprehensive account of how Association of Southeast Asian Nations, its individual members and as a group, rose above its worst regional financial crisis 20 years ago, to become one of the most resilient in the face of the worst global financial crisis just a decade later. The challenges faced and the policy responses taken, chronicled and analyzed in this study, can hopefully provide further lessons as we face a new global policy paradigm. It is a must-read for academics, the financial community, and policymakers alike.

A New Architecture for the U.S. National Accounts brings together a distinguished group of contributors to initiate the development of a comprehensive and fully integrated set of United States national accounts. The purpose of the new architecture is not only to integrate the existing systems of accounts, but also to identify gaps and inconsistencies and expand and incorporate systems of nonmarket accounts with the core system. Since the United States economy accounts for almost thirty percent of the world economy, it is not surprising that accounting for this huge and diverse set of economic activities requires a decentralized statistical system. This volume outlines the major assignments among institutions that include the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Labor, the Census Bureau, and the Governors of the Federal Reserve System. An important part of the motivation for the new architecture is to integrate the different components and make them consistent. This volume is the first step toward achieving that goal.

This paper examines the status of GDP compilation in 189 economies against six key criteria that describe national accounts compilation practices: whether the benchmark year is up to date, the availability and timeliness of annual and quarterly GDP, whether GDP by production and expenditure approaches are compiled independently to allow for comparisons, whether estimates by the income approach are available, and the vintage of the System of National Accounts (SNA) applied. We used publicly available information including from the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB), and, for 108 developing economies, information provided by the IMF’s real sector advisors stationed in the Fund’s 10 Regional Technical Assistance Centers (RTACs). The data were compared with the UNSD and World Bank databases. We find that 50 percent of economies have acceptable benchmark years, 72 percent report timely annual GDP data, while 55 percent of economies report timely data for quarterly GDP. The study presents some conclusions for priorities of capacity development.