Online Meeting of the Group of Experts on National Accounts

From 17 – 26 May 2021 the Online Meeting of the Group of Experts on National Accounts was jointly organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), Eurostat, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the EFTA Statistical Office (ESO), in collaboration with International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN Statistics Division (UNSD), and the World Bank. ESO supported the organisation of the meeting by providing the meeting platform and interpretation and held a welcome statement during the opening of the meeting.

The purpose of this meeting was to discuss the update of the System of National Accounts 2008 (2008 SNA) and the status of the different topics on the SNA research agenda. The six sessions covered topics on the planned activities and programme for updating the 2008 SNA and Balance of Payments Manual, 6^th Edition, including communication of national accounts, digitalisation, well-being and sustainability, globalisation, and finally looking forward to post-COVID-19 production of national accounts. Possible updates to the SNA will be distributed on global consultation (eight guidance notes to be launched shortly and more to follow) through methological guidance notes. These guidance notes are subject to testing and/or feasibility assessments and the organisers strongly encouraged countries to volunteer for testing of the methodology.

The meeting attracted more than 350 participants in total, and more than 200 particpant were registered for each of the session. ESO is pleased to have provided assistance in organising this event and thank the main organisers, collaborators, and participants for this interesting meeting.

For further information about the meeting, click here.