The current financial and economic crisis:

Statistical initiatives of the E(S)CB

Daniela SchackisEuropean Central Bank – DG Statistics

OECD Short-Term Economic Statistics Expert Group (STESEG); Paris, 14-15 September 2009

• The financial and economic crisis has heightend the importance of statistics for monetary and economic analysis and financial stability

• … and has increased the attention devoted to short-term economic indicators in monitoring the crisis.

• Producing monetary and financial statistics is a key responsibility of the ESCB.

• The supply of statistics requires taking an active, forward-looking role to meeting future user needs, as well as continuous prioritisation to keep the overall costs and burden to a minimum.

The financial crisis and STS1

E(S)CB initiatives underway or in preparationAIM: strengthening the information basis for the

ECB’s role in monetary policy and financial stability and contributing to more transparent financial markets by:

1. implementing statistics covering all financial (sub-) sectors, markets and instruments, incl. developing more micro-databases

2. capturing key interlinkages, particularly with the real economy, by further enhancing the euro area accounts: including housing and other produced assets, timeliness 90 days

3. consistently recording the impact of the crisis on fiscal data

4. fostering cooperation and information sharing (ESCB, ESS, IMF, BIS, CEBS, industry associations)

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Better information from all financial(sub-) sectors• Monetary and financial statistics: further advancing

timeliness for MFI interest rate statistics, providing more breakdowns of MFI balance sheet statistics (e.g. loans by industry, securitised and collateralised loans) and new data on credit lines

• Regular compilation of statistics on Financial Vehicle Corporations engaged in securitisation transactions and MFI securitisation (publication expected in 2010)

• New statistics on assets and liabilities of investment funds – including hedge funds and real estate funds (first publication planned in Nov 2009)

• New statistics on Insurance Corporations and Pension Funds (still based on data available in Member States)

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Better information from all markets and on instruments (I)

• Further development of the Centralised Securities Database (contains 5.2 million instruments, processes daily 2 million prices), e.g. to include credit ratings

• Looking through Asset-Backed Securities: integrating micro data on structured securities from European Securitisation Forum, the CSDB and the ESCB List of Financial Vehicle Corporations

• Micro-data on loans: possible elaboration of central and private credit registers

4

Better information from all markets and on instruments (II)

• Development of (very detailed) securities holding statistics with residency and sub-sector classification of holders, perhaps singling out Large and Complex Banking Groups and possibly security by security

• Promoting the development of a standard electronic data sheet for each security issued and making such data available through a public database

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Better information across sectors

• Further enhancing the quarterly integrated financial and non-financial euro area accounts as a comprehensive and consistent overview of (interlinkages between) financial and real developments

• Addressing requirements for micro data on households’ and corporate finance, including Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs); first SME survey results expected in autumn 2009 (with European Commission)

• ESCB assists Eurostat and National Statistical Institutes in the statistical recording of various government support measures, through the CMFB

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Better information at global level

Cooperation with IMF and BIS and, to a lesser extent, Eurostat, OECD, UN and World Bank, to address certain data gaps at the international level, particularly concerning the assessment of macro-financial risks and systemic vulnerabilities, e.g.

• Ongoing work to better monitor global credit risk transfers: notably enhancing regular BIS statistics on credit default swaps (CDS)

• The recently published BIS, ECB and IMF ‘Handbook on Securities Statistics’ part I on debt securities issues, addresses a need for more extensive, comparable securities data

• Compilation of timely world aggregates (e.g. world quarterly GDP after 60 days) with regional breakdowns

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• Main uses:

– ECB is user of short-term statistics (not compiler)

– Price stability primary objective of ECB’s monetary policy

– Short-term statistics used for economic analysis assessing the risks to price stability

• Key requirements:

– Reliable and timely results for the euro area and its (main) member countries; sufficient degree of detail

– Harmonised methodology, collection, aggregation and adjustment

– Most important indicators (incl. HICP, GDP, industrial production, retail trade) covered by PEEIs

Short-term economic statistics and the current crisis (I) 8

STS indicators gained importance:

• Monitoring the economic crisis

• Depth and duration of the crisis

• Industries and countries which are more/less affected

• First signs of turning points

Increased importance of requirements:

• Reliability and timeliness

• Coverage and appropriate level of detail

Short-term economic statistics and the current crisis (II) 9

Thank you for your attention!

Questions and comments?