The adapted version of the website for people with disabilities was developed by the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Government of Sweden.
The adapted version of the website for people with disabilities was developed by the National Statistics Office of Georgia (Geostat) with the support of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the Government of Sweden.
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Date: 15 November 2019
On November 15 2019, the National Statistics Office of Georgia (GEOSTAT) hosted a special event at the “Radisson Blu Iveria Hotel”, on the occasion of the transition to new standards of the System of National Accounts (SNA 2008) and introduced to the distinguished audience the methodological changes of new standards of the System of National Accounts (SNA 2008), revised GDP data sets and other aggregates of national accounts.
Mr. Selim Cakir, the Resident Representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Mr. Martin Auskers, the Deputy Director for the Economic Statistics at the Danish Statistics Office addressed to the invited audience members. Mr. M. Auskers informed invited guests about the methodological features and international practice of introducing the new standard (SNA 2008).
“Transition to the new System of National Accounts (SNA 2008) includes the calculation of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and a number of macroeconomic indicators, in accordance with the new methodology. EU countries have begun switching to the new SNA methodology in 2014. Armenia, Turkey, Ukraine and Belarus have also joined their ranks during 2014-2015. To date, the SNA 2008 has been introduced in about 80 countries around the world” - underlined Gogita Todradze. He added that some countries still follow the previous version of the National Accounts System (SNA 1993).
SNA is a combination of integrated macroeconomic accounts and balances based on internationally agreed concepts, classifications, and general accounting rules. Its methodological basis is the international manual SNA 2008 developed by the United Nations (UN), Eurostat, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Implementation of the new SNA 2008 methodology, with the active involvement of international experts, has been running in GEOSTAT since 2017. However, this year the transition to the above standards is envisaged with the EU Association Agreement Action Plan.
The transition to the SNA 2008 has led to a number of changes in national accounts, on the one hand, it is related to the calculation of different macroeconomic indicators in accordance with the new standard, and, on the other hand, the substantial improvement of the data source in terms of assessing the scope of the non-observed economy and the processing of administrative data.
Differences between the old and new methodologies are mainly related to the change in the FISIM, capitalizing on research and development, processing costs, and improving the calculation of imputed rent on owner occupied dwellings. Improvements to the data source include assessing the scope of the non-observed economy in various sectors and improving the quality of indicators.
As international practice shows, all the above-mentioned changes lead to an overall increase in GDP and other aggregates of national accounts. However, in order to harmonize with the figures for the previous period, the historical series will be recalculated.
The new methodology for GDP compilation and other aggregates of national accounts was published on November 15, 2019 by GEOSTAT. Meanwhile, the historical time series from 2010 were revised.
