CNB introduces ESA 2010 standard into official statistics

Published: 24/10/2014 Modified: 15/3/2017

The Croatian National Bank (CNB) has introduced the ESA 2010 standard in the statistics within its scope of activity. In external relations, government finance and financial account statistics, the alignment with the ESA 2010 methodology was carried out at the end of October 2014, while in monetary and financial statistics it was carried out at the end of January 2015.

In some of the CNB's statistics, the quantitative effect of these changes is significant. The biggest change refers to the reclassification of two large public non-financial corporations from the sector of public non-financial corporations to the central government subsector, which has a considerable quantitative effect on all statistics except on current account balance statistics. In financial accounts, the effect of the introduction of a new sector "captive financial institutions and money lenders" has been observed, which has included some twenty corporations that have so far been classified as non-financial corporations.

In external statistics, the introduction of the ESA 2010 methodology is only part of a parallel start of implementation of the new methodology (BPM6). This has resulted in a noticeable: 1) decrease in the balance of foreign direct investments and a corresponding increase in other investments due to the transfer of direct investments into hybrid and subordinated financial instruments with the economic features of a long-term debt, as well as investment in "fellows" in the sector of other financial intermediaries, from the direct investment subaccount to the other investment subaccount, 2) increase in the gross external debt of the Republic of Croatia due to the reclassification of special drawing rights into the external debt of the central bank sector and 3) decrease in the gross value of goods exports and imports because of the reallocation of certain imports and exports items from the goods subaccount to the services subaccount or vice-versa.

In the monetary and financial statistics, in addition to the above mentioned change that refers to the reclassification of two large public non-financial corporations from the public non-financial corporations sector into the central government subsector, the reclassification of the foreign currency-indexed kuna position from the "kuna position" group item to the "foreign currency" group item has a significant quantitative effect. Other changes in monetary and financial statistics refer to the following: 1) the inclusion of money market funds in the other monetary financial institutions sector, 2) the first releases of data on the transactions of the sectors of other monetary financial institutions for the selected positions and 3) the first releases of data on the balances of assets and liabilities of non-money market funds.