Technical Assistance Cofinanced By The Government Of Finland To The Republic Of Kazakhstan For The Energy Sector Study

The mission welcomes the progress made by the RK in improving the quality of GFS. The Ministry of Finance has taken into account several recommendations of the previous mission on increasing transparency, improving data quality, and regarding the channels used to provide GFS. In particular, updated bridge tables are used when generating statistics, National Fund (NF) data are recorded separately from national budget (NB) data, and GFS are disseminated through the IMF Integrated Data Collection System.

The mission welcomes the progress made by the RK in improving the quality of GFS. The Ministry of Finance has taken into account several recommendations of the previous mission on increasing transparency, improving data quality, and regarding the channels used to provide GFS. In particular, updated bridge tables are used when generating statistics, National Fund (NF) data are recorded separately from national budget (NB) data, and GFS are disseminated through the IMF Integrated Data Collection System.

A technical assistance mission assisted the Bureau of National Statistics (BNS) under the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan in developing discrete quarterly estimates of Gross Domestic Product by expenditure (GDPE). The mission assisted BNS staff in developing chain-linked time series of GDPE components by applying the benchmarking and annual overlap techniques. The results were compared to the cumulative estimates currently published on the BNS website. The new estimates of quarterly GDPE better reflect the precise quarterly structure of the economy. These improvements to data and methods will improve the understanding of the Kazakhstan economy, both for domestic policymaking and international surveillance.

At the request of the Ministry of Finance (MoF) Republic of Kazakhstan, a technical assistance mission was conducted by the IMF’s Statistics Department (STA) to assist the Kazakhstan authorities in strengthening the compilation and dissemination of government finance statistics (GFS) and public sector debt statistics (PSDS) for decision making and providing data to the Fund for surveillance. The technical mission focused on addressing issues encountered in the annual GFS time series; assisting with the classification of the Problem Loan Fund (PLF) data for their inclusion in GFS; discussing the MoF’s opportunities and limitations in submitting PSDS; and reviewing the procedures for assigning institutional units to the general government sector (GGS) and the public sector (PS) to derive a uniformed public sector institutional table (PSIT) across all macroeconomic statistics.

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