Comments on the report entitled “Recent Revisions to GDP Statistics and the National Statistics Office’s Explanation” published on Friday.

I welcome the technical report entitled Recent Revisions to GDP Statistics and the National Statistics Office’s Explanation presented to and published by the Malta Labour Party on 12 January 2007. The report describes the revisions that have been effected to GDP statistics in NSO News Release No. 277/2006 dated 7 December 2006 and raises a number of technical questions on this issue.

The report does not conclude that the credibility of GDP statistics for Malta or that of the revisions effected in the said news release is in doubt. As stated during the presentation of the report, the main objective of this document is to further enhance the credibility of official statistics.

The report welcomes the efforts of the National Statistics Office to sustain its communications with the media and to adopt a system where only three calendar years of past data will be subject to revision after the first quarter of 2007. This will be in line with the office’s pre-established work plan as agreed with Eurostat.

Essentially, the report poses a number of technical questions and asks for more clarification regarding the revisions recently effected to GDP data. This approach is very much in line with the initiative taken in the press conference held by the Malta Statistics Authority and the National Statistics Office on 29 December 2006 when questions and demands for clarifications of a technical nature were answered. At the same time, further questions were invited from all interested users of statistical output.

I will be asking the National Statistics Office to compile a document, to be presented to the Board of the Malta Statistics Authority in the coming days, to give technical answers to the questions posed in the Report. Among the issues that I expect to be covered in this document to be made public by the Office is the way in which the utilisation of different and independent statistical sources contributes to revisions in the data.

The report states that revisions for reference periods going back more than three years detract from credibility. It is to be appreciated however that the NSO will adopt the practice of revising not more than three calendar years of back data after the first quarter of 2007. As the Board of the Malta Statistics Authority has been informed on several occasions, the NSO has been and is still engaged in the ongoing process of compiling and verifying ESA95-based data for GDP for years going back to 1995.

There is general consensus regarding the importance of the quality and credibility of national statistics. For such credibility to prevail, it is essential that statistical methods and practices enjoy the consensus of a sufficiently wide spectrum of civil society. I would like to take the opportunity to extend an invitation to the shadow minister of finance to have a series of meetings with the Malta Statistics Authority to discuss the issues raised in the report as well as other issues of national interest concerning the production of official statistics in Malta. This is a process that can be extended to other interested bodies and institutions.

Reno Camilleri

Chairman

Malta Statistics Authority