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Treatment of the output of international financial institutions

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Description of the issue
International financial institutions, such as IMF, the World Bank and regional development banks, are public financial corporations (and, by implication, institutional units) which are, as a rule, non-residents vis-à-vis countries, residing, as these institutions do, in the “international economic territory”.

Like other financial corporations, they use inputs to produce financial intermediation output, which has a directly measured component (a fee) and an indirectly measured one. They are jointly owned by the Governments of their member countries under cooperative arrangements, such as the IMF Articles of Agreement. The characterization and compilation of their output, and the use of that output by their member countries, require elaboration under the current SNA guidelines.

The AEG considered this issue at its 9th meeting and acknowledged that it requires further work, taking into consideration the cost-of-funds approach and the valuation at cost (possibly including the full cost of capital) for the non-market part of output. This issue will be addressed under "Calculation of FISIM" (issue 16) and "Clarification of income concept in the SNA" (issue 10) of the Research Agenda.

For more information see paragraphs 28 and 29 of the conclusions of the 9th AEG meeting.

This issue is linked to issue 10 and issue 16 of the Research Agenda.