WRITTEN QUESTION E-0898/01

by Renato Brunetta (PPE-DE), Francesco Fiori (PPE-DE), Vitaliano Gemelli (PPE-DE), Raffaele Lombardo (PPE-DE), Cristiana Muscardini (UEN), Francesco Speroni (TDI) and Antonio Tajani (PPE-DE) to the Commission

(28 March 2001)

Subject: Divergences between estimates and final figures in Italian macroeconomic data: impact on the Commission's assessments

On 1 March 2001 ISTAT (the Italian National Statistical Institute) published the annual final figures for the Italian national accounts, with its estimates for gross domestic product (GDP) for 2000 and corrections of the estimates for 1997-1999 with respect to the estimates given last year.

These data reveal considerable variations concerning household consumption (+ 1,5 %), imports (+ 1,5 %), investments (+ 1,3 %) and GDP (+ 0,7 %).

It is difficult to reconcile the data issued for 2000 with the statistical information that had been made available to date. The average revision to the GDP growth rate for the three-year period 1997-1999 is over 14 %, the household consumption growth rate has been revised by over 30 % and the growth rate in investments by over 70 %.

ISTAT has also issued a list of the new statistical sources on which it has based the revision of its estimates. There is a significant discrepancy between the signals which emerge from data on economic trends (including the national quarterly economic accounts) and the annual final data.

The conflict between the information on economic trends and the annual data prompts the fear that the short-term economic indicators on which ISTAT bases its own quarterly accounts are becoming more and more biased and less reliable.

Can the Commission say:

- whether the new statistical sources used by ISTAT are known to the Community institutions?

- whether the revisions made by ISTAT have any effect on the assessments of the Italian economy, which under the EC Treaty it is bound to evaluate?

- finally, what action it intends to take in this regard?

Answer given by Mr Solbes Mira on behalf of the Commission

(5 June 2001)

The Italian national statistical institute (ISTAT) has indeed published the annual figures for Italy's gross domestic product for 2000, plus the corrections for 1997-1999, which turned out to be fairly substantial.

The scale of these corrections may be due to a number of factors, such as the difficult initial phase of implementing the new system of national accounts the European System of National and Regional Accounts in the Community (ESA 95) which includes new statistical sources and major changes to the concepts used in the previous system. The other Member States are in the same situation and it will take a while until the systems for calculation have settled down properly.

In the case of other Member States, major corrections of their growth rates (estimates for 2000 against 1999 and for 1998) related to the following aggregates:

GDP:

- Belgium: 0,3

- Spain: + 0,4

- Netherlands:+ 0,4

- United Kingdom: + 0,5

- Italy: + 0,2

Household consumption:

- Belgium: 0,5

- Spain: + 0,4

- United Kingdom: + 0,8

- Italy: + 0,5

Investments:

- Belgium: + 0,9

- Germany: + 1,6

- Spain: + 0,5

- Netherlands: 1,1

- Italy: + 0,7

Another factor in the size of the corrections is the increasing pressure on Member States see the Council's Action Plan of 29 September 2000 on the statistics required for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) to provide quarterly GDP statistics at increasingly short notice. As a result, in the space of one year the period for reporting results for Italy has gone from 80 days to 70 days after the end of the quarter, with rapid estimates expected within 45 days.

One thing is certain: under ESA 95 the national accounts of the Member States are now established according to harmonised concepts and it is the task of the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) to ensure that these concepts are correctly applied.

Turning to the honourable Members' specific questions, the following information can be provided:

- The Commission (Eurostat) is familiar to some extent with the new sources of statistics for drawing up national accounts in Italy, but the detailed description has still to be completed by ISTAT before it is officially communicated to Eurostat. This is because, under the new ESA, Member States are required to provide detailed descriptions of the sources and methods used to calculate gross domestic product (GDP), as was the case under the previous system in the early 1990s. The Member States are currently working on this and their reports are expected shortly.

- In its assessment of the Member States' economies, the Commission naturally relies on the most recent available figures that they transmit to Eurostat. The correction of national accounts for the period 1997-1999 carried out on 1 March 2001 led to a re-evaluation of the dynamics and make-up of the growth over that period. However, the correction of growth in GDP in real terms, which was the main item of data in the whole evaluation exercise, turned out to be not exceptionally high compared both to the previous corrections and to those carried out for the other Member States (see the data in the first paragraph). Moreover, the final estimate for GDP growth in real terms for 2000 tallies with the estimate the Commission made in autumn 2000. Lastly, this correction does not affect the Commission's evaluation of the current economic situation.

- Eurostat which is responsible for the collecting, checking and validating the Member States' data in the various statistical fields will continue to perform this task, especially in connection with the inventories of sources and methods which it will be receiving shortly. These inventories make it possible to conduct a more sophisticated evaluation of the conformity of Italian practices with Community standards.