News and Development

Training in Balance of Payments and Economic Classifications

The training involved six staff from the Statistics Office and one staff from the Department of Planning. The training concentrated on the conceptual framework of the Balance of Payments Manual 5. Much of the training was devoted to conceptual aspects and identifying various administrative data sources that can be used to compile the BOP.

One interesting component of the training on BOP is the development of a methodology that can be used to estimate travel expenditures in the BOP.

Assistance has been provided to the office as part of the training in the editing of the import data for 2007. This involved checking the entries from customs, creating tables and editing other tables that the Statistics Office had produced.

A training on various economic classifications included classifications of government expenditures and revenue within the framework of the IMF Government Finance Statistics 2001 (GFS, 2001), classifications of economic activities and individual consumption. Assistance was alos provided to recompile the government finance statistics for 2008 into a GFS 2001 format which the office intend to adopt. This involved reclassifying government activities, expenditures and revenues.