Description of methods and sources for Albania - INSTAT

IPA 2009 Multi-beneficiary StatisticalCooperation ProgrammeCHAPTER 6: BALANCING OR INTEGRATION PROCEDURE, ANDVALIDATING ESTIMATES6.1 GDP balancing procedureA specific requirement of the Albanian National Account figures regards thenecessity to ensure coherency between the supply and the demand side estimates.The main purpose of GDP revision work is improvement and completion of datasources and methods for the two GDP approaches. The process from the flashestimates to final annual GDP figure for a particular year is split into several steps.The first stage is flash annual estimate of GDP by the production approach which isprepared at aggregated activity level (7 macro-branches) within eleven months afterthe end of the year and is based on preliminary data sources of Annual StructuralBusiness Survey and VAT. The estimates of GDP by expenditure approach are notmade in this phase.The second stage includes the semi-final annual accounts estimates of GDP byproduction approach within six months after the flash estimates. The semi-finalaccounts are based on more complete data sources and therefore almost entirely ondirect methods. Also, this step includes estimates of GDP expenditure approach.It is necessary to underline that we do not have the independent way of estimationsof GDP by expenditures. For this reason, GDP nominal level in this step isdetermined by the production approach. The value of GDP by expenditureapproach has to be equal to the value of GDP by production approach. At the sametime, we have estimated some components of GDP Expenditure side, such as HH’Final Consumption, Final Consumption of General Government and NPISH, GrossFixed Capital Formation, Net-export. As regards “changes in inventories”, we havedone some estimation in experimental way; however, due to lack of information,they are not taken into account. For this reason, changes in inventory are giventogether with statistical discrepancies as residuals to GDP by expenditure.Meanwhile, this component, changes in inventory + statistical discrepanciesrepresents differences between two approaches of GDP.These estimates are almost quasi-final and only minor improvements or furtherrevisions mostly regarding business activities are necessary at a later stage.The final accounts’ estimates are made after t + 36 months and are prepared at 25branches of NA classification. An important aspect in this step is improvement ofGDP with quality analysis of data sources and with additional elimination ofmistakes and inconsistencies in data sources. However, these are slightly moreimportant in the production activities, particularly in agriculture and other productionactivities due to changes in primary data sources and due to additional and moredetailed analysis of data sources. The differences between GDP by the production101/236