The Central Bank of Ecuador (BCE), in compliance with its function of preparing, analyzing and publishing macroeconomic synthesis statistics in a technical and transparent manner, makes available to the public the results of the Base Year Change Project (BYC) of the National Accounts.
Over the last six years, the Central Bank has worked on the update of the methodology of Annual and Quarterly National Accounts, in order to implement the best practices and international statistical standards. The BCE has received technical assistance from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the modernization of the methodology. This effort will replace the fixed year base with a reference year of a moving base, incorporating a broader source of statistical indicators and reflecting the most recent productive and cost structure of the country.
The main initiatives and methodological innovations of the Base Year Change of the National Accounts consisted of:
- The update of the reference year from 2007 to 2018 which facilitates the measurement of the economy growth from a recent and stable year, without external shocks or natural catastrophes.
- The replacement of the fixed year base with a reference year of a moving base that allows calculating economic growth with respect to the immediately previous year.
- The chain linking methodology, which more accurately reflects the country’s current productive structure and incorporates the changes and evolutions of the economy in the short term.
- The construction of the Business Directory that allows the compilation of a registry of productive units grouped in economic sectors, including public and private institutional units. In addition, it considers the nature of the legal entity, the obligation to keep accounting, the economic activity carried out, among other characteristics that automate the classification of productive units. This Directory under the chain linking methodology with the reference year 2018, started with a total of 1,065,715 records.
- The application of chaining techniques in volume measurements that allows obtaining a long-term growth series, which originates from short-term growth rates at prices from the previous year.
- The updating of production structures and functions based on data from administrative records, productive surveys, and public and private sector statistics.
- The preparation of retropolated historical series of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), main macroeconomic variables and value added by industries. These series range from 1965 to 2017 for the annual series, and from 2000 to 2017 for the quarterly series.
- The results obtained through this project include the Supply-Use Table (SUT), Employment and Income Matrix (EIM), Table of Integrated Economic Accounts (TIEA), Annual Provincial and Cantonal Accounts, Quarterly National Accounts, and retropolated historical series of the main macroeconomic variables.
These methodological innovations will be very useful to facilitate research, analysis and economic studies. Additionally, it will make it possible to demonstrate the basket of products and industries and technological changes, which will favor planning and informed decision making in the public and private sectors with updated figures.
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