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IPS173 Tatiana Mosquera Yon et al.
question is: do these concepts are still able to reflect economic activities inside
the economy and its international relations adequately?
The experience made with the cooperative approach between the
Deutsche Bundesbank and the Banque de France turned out that a cross
statistical approach combined with a cross-country approach could foster the
understanding of MNE activities and enable compilers to measure their
activities adequately and consistently without leaving the grounds of the
existing concepts.
The insights into a group's operations, in its international production
arrangements and internal pricing help to improve the statistical reporting of
the MNE-Group members in a common and coherent way in all statistics. Even
more, the work in the external work stream improved the understanding about
statistical needs and interdependencies between various statistics of the
responsible units in the group and it has fostered the internal communication
between the group members in different countries.
The work in “two work streams“ has eased the communication between
the experts (rapid conclusions on conceptual issues and methods) on the one
hand and talks with national group members (simple communication without
language barriers, openness to admit mistakes) on the other hand.
In addition, what should not be underestimated for the future work
between all stakeholders is the confidence in each other combined with the
will to improve the meaningfulness and therewith the overall quality of the
statistics. However, even with an optimal cooperation between all stakeholders
the process is very time consuming. From our experience at least two years
are needed from the initial start to a fully “harmonized” reporting in all
countries.
Currently Banque de France and Deutsche Bundesbank continue the work
to further enhance the knowledge on global production arrangements of
MNEs and to fine-tune its cooperation approach. It is foreseen to share any
new experiences with the statistical community in the upcoming months.

References
1. Ahmad, N; et al. (2017): Indicators on global value chains: A guide
for empirical work, OECD Statistics Working Papers, 2017/08, OECD
Publishing, Paris
2. International Monetary Fund (2009): Balance of Payments and
International Investment Position Manual (BPM 6)
3. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (2015): Guide to
Measuring Global Productio

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