Description of methods and sources for Albania - INSTAT

IPA 2009 Multi-beneficiary StatisticalCooperation ProgrammeIntroductionThe Description of sources and methods is one of the main methodological manuals forNational Accounts in Albania. It has been done for the first time in the framework of IPA2007 in year 2010 and has been updated during the IPA 2008 and IPA 2009. Actually thisversion is the last one updated based on project work carried out during IPA 2009. Themain objectives of this project were: To improve the basis of the annual and quarterly constant price estimates in thebeneficiaries by leading to an increased quality and comparability of the NA dataused for a wide range of national and international needs. To update and extend the IPA 2007 description of the sources and methods for thepart of annual and quarterly constant price estimates by including more detail and theimprovements achieved during the current pilot project. To update the expert assessment of strengths and weaknesses prepared under the IPA2007 project for the part of constant price estimates by including the detailed resultsof the Pilot Project and the improvements achieved. This should also include anupdate of the recommendations how further improvements can be achieved.As has been mentioned above one of the objectives was the update of GNI. The mainchanges are related the transformation of GDP in GNI which has been described in chapter8: Transition of GDP in GNI. In the previous description it has been the experimentalestimations according to UN format and now it is updated with the new final estimation ofthis component.This chapter describes the transition of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to Gross NationalIncome (GNI). This transition is realized through data on primary incomes betweenresidents and non-residents. Main incomes are compensation of employees received byresidents from non-residents and paid to non-residents from residents and property incomesreceived by residents and paid to non-residents. The principal data source for compilationof GNI is the balance of payments (BoP). The National Bank of Albania is responsible forcompiling the Balance of Payments and the Institute of Statistics uses the data in thecompilation of the GDP-GNI transition.Another important update is done in the Part C - Quarterly National Account, chapter 18.In the Albanian case, at the detailed level the series are consistent in current prices and inthe base year prices. INSTAT presented differently the annual national accounts andquarterly national accounts volume measures, creating some confusions for nonexperiencedusers. Therefore one major improvement was developing a methodology for achain volume series of QNA and to present the quarterly accounts in the previous year’sprices in order to be consistent with the annual accounts. The annual overlap technique isthe only method that automatically meets the time consistency criterion.11/236