6 November 2007: The Pacific Financial Technical Assistance Cooperation (PFTAC) sent Monetary Statistics Expert, Mr Michael Andrews on a mission to CISO for about three weeks from 16 October to 01 November 2007.
The mission’s priority was to review the Government Finance Statistics (GFS) published as the Public Sector Accounts statistical series with the aim to assist CISO in moving toward the current international standard the 2001 GFS Manual. The current GFS is compiled using the 1986 GFS Manual. The Cook Islands government has also moved from cash accounting to accrual accounting and the latest GFS manual is designed for accrual accounting practices. Other mission tasks included the development of bridge table to map from the MFEM chart of accounts to GFS. This involved a meeting with key staff at the Treasury Management Division - MFEM seeing that financial data are derived mainly from their administrative records and publications. Other tasks involved the preparation of draft GFS tables on the basis of the 2001 GFS Manual, coming to an agreement on an action plan to complete transition to 2001 GFS Manual and revising the General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) for GFS.
Though Michael worked mostly with Kevin Hosking, the person in charge of this series, six other CISO staff members including the Government Statistician participated in the group sessions and attended presentations made by the PFTAC expert.
Michael says that,“…we (the Cook Islands) and the Federated States of Micronesia are the only two countries in the region to produce Monetary Statistics without a Central Bank.”
The mission also included a brief look at the GDDS files and the current National Accounts methodology.
We thank the team at Treasury Management Division for your cooperation throughout this mission and especially for your ongoing assistance in providing data and further clarifications to data given for this statistical output.
We are grateful to Michael and your team at PFTAC for providing us with assistance in this area of our work.