The increasing complexity of the relationships between the different agents of the economy (residents and non-residents) are renewing the need for information and establishing new standards for the estimation of the data that reflect them.
In Argentina, both the Central Bank of the Argentine Republic (BCRA) and the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) are responsible for the preparation of external sector statistics. At present, there is joint work between both organizations1, exchanging information and agreeing on methodologies, to meet the demand for information.
In order to be able to face these challenges, in 2017 the BCRA comprehensively updated the surveys associated with the compilation of external sector statistics. It is for this reason that, through Communication “A” 6401, the creation of a new Survey of External Assets and Liabilities was ordered, which replaced and expanded the two surveys that had existed until then: the Survey of Debt Securities and Other External Liabilities (Communication “A” 3602 and complementary ones) and the Survey of Direct Investments in the Country and Abroad (Communication “A” 4237 and complementary ones).
As a novelty, the questionnaire of the new survey includes information on foreign assets, and information on positions in financial derivatives. These innovations are in line with the Sixth Edition of the International Monetary Fund’s Balance of Payments Manual, and with the G20’s Data Gaps Initiative, in which the world’s major economies recognized the existence of information gaps on which it was imperative to work.
On the other hand, the compilation methodology was modernized, working on the platforms for uploading information (it offers the possibility of carrying out the upload in bulk by extracting data from each declarant’s own systems or manually) and on the elimination of the associated transaction costs. In this sense, the new survey is completed electronically by entering through the website of the Federal Administration of Public Revenues (AFIP) and the validations of the uploaded data are carried out in a more agile manner, minimizing errors in the upload and ensuring the consistency of the information received by the BCRA.
After the process of validation and control of the information, the data is shared with INDEC, an agency that uses it as an input for the estimation of the Balance of Payments and the International Investment Position.
