Summary of Ann Lisbet Brathaug’s presentations

Block A

Ann Lisbet Brathaug from Statistics Norway summarised the EFTA-Project between Statistics Norway and State Statistics Committee of Ukraine. The project started with a fact finding mission in February 2008 after a request from EFTA. The aim was to describe the reconciliation of the final consumption in quarterly and annual national accounts and household living conditions survey (HLCS).

She mentioned the general problems in household expenditure surveys and the problematic groups of consumption such as tobacco, vehicles, dwellings, etc. She mentioned the need for adjusting the national accounts estimates for household final consumption expenditure for definitional differences, underreporting and non-coverage.

She presented a comparison of the household final consumption expenditure in the national accounts and the household expenditure surveys of Ukraine and Norway. The comparison showed discrepancies in both countries but she underlined that the discrepancies were normal due to the methodological differences and scope of the surveys.

Finally she summarised the recommendations in terms of national accounts and household living conditions survey (HLCS) in Ukraine.

Block C

In this presentation, the relation between the CPI and household final consumption expenditures were analysed.

Household budget surveys (HBS) are used both as a basis for CPI calculations and are one of the main sources for the compilation of the household final consumption expenditure in the national accounts. However, the weights in consumption groups might have different weights in the NA and the HBS estimates. Although this is very common in most of the European countires, it was one of the concerns of the users in Ukraine.

There are conceptual and definitional differences between the national accounts estimates and the household final consumption expenditure which could explain some of these discrepancies. 

Ms. Brathaug discussed the differences of the price deflator in the National accounts and the CPI and gave recommendations in terms of deflating different consumption groups. She then gave an overview of the differences of the consumption deflator and the CPI in both Ukraine and Norway between the years of 2002 and 2008.