PÉTER BÁNHEGYI Real or Mock Surplus? Uncertainties in Measuring Goods and Current Account Balance

Statistics are complied upon reports provided by data suppliers which are usually obliged to give their data by law. These laws include goals of these data reports and guidelines for providing them. Even in the case, however, when these data reports fulfil all requirements, we would not be sure that we have got the right picture of economic processes because, as a result of characteristics and possibilities of the reporting system, value added belonging to non resident economies may appear in resident statistics, mainly in foreign trade, balance of payments and national accounts. In other words, it is important to distinguish real value added from the mock one in these statistics. Eurostat and many national statistical institutes have already noticed and identified this problem and suggested different solutions considered adequate but it seems that there is no comprehensive description and analysis of this question yet. We will therefore examine this phenomenon and its proposed solutions together with their practical difficulties and consequences. It will be clear that this question of value added, although it is also usually in relation to multinational enterprises, is rather different from the one of SPEs and it may raise in any country where it is possible to receive data from non residents for resident statistics. Statisticians should be care since the already recorded mock value added may amount to significant order and it may cause considerable distortions and revisions in different statistics.