MEDSTAT IV: ADMINISTRATIVE RECORDS AS MAIN RESOURCEs FOR BUSINESS STATISTICS
STUDY VISIT IN STATISTICS BULGARIA: 23 – 25 OCTOBER 2018
Utilizing the fiscal and financial statements for improving business statistics
Business registers are a key tool for business statistics; in particular, they are a reliable tool for tracing the economic realities. This pushes more and more the statisticians towards implementing better methods and processes to regularly update the business registers which will then be widely used in the analysis and the monitoring of economic development and will also serve as a sampling frame for designing business surveys. Typically business samples are small because of the high costs of surveys and of the time that is necessary to carry them out. Generally, the non-response rate is quite high, and statisticians are always looking for an estimation method to adjust.
Under the MEDSTAT IV project, several workshops were organized on the updating of the business registers and on the methodologies to do it, on the use of administrative sources, on file matching, on sampling, on the methods of extrapolation of survey results. … A study visit to Tunis was organized on these topics on 10-12 October 2017, considering that INS-Tunis is quite advanced on these topics.
The next event is a study visit to Bulgaria Statistics which will have as main subject, the use of the accounting documents, available at the Tax Directorate of the Ministry of Finance and the integration of the data in the business register. This action can replace regular business surveys, help save money and time and allow for a much larger amount of information to be used in regularly updating the register, and, last but not least, to get a better coverage of the economy and more reliable database for analyzes.
This activity of the project will enable the participating countries to know more about the Bulgarian example, and to envisage pursuing in the strengthening of the links between statistics and the tax administration through signing memorandums of understanding with their respective Ministries of Finance for the regular use of the accounting documents of the businesses.
For more information, please contact MEDSTAT4@expertisefrance.fr
