UN Committee of Experts on Business and Trade Statistics

9:30 – 9:50: Opening remarks

• Angela Paolini Ellard WTO (Deputy Director-General)
• Stefan Schweinfest (Director, UNSD) -- video recording

9:50 – 10:10: Election of the Chair

• Overview of the election process (UNSD as UNCEBTS Secretariat)
• End-of-term remarks from Outgoing Chair (Stefano Menghinello, Istat)

10:10 – 10:40: Follow up to the UNSC decision and introduction of the strategic framework (UNCEBTS Chair)

• Note on the integration of business and trade statistics with other statistical domains and strategy direction of UNCEBTS (Stefano Menghinello, Istat and Cristina Neves, INE)

11:10 – 12:30: Stocktaking of countries/international organizations experiences

• WTO
• Eurostat (Petra Sneijers, Eurostat)
• OECD (Annabelle Mourougane, OECD)
• UN Trade and Development (Onno Hoffmeister, UNCTAD)

14:00 – 15:30: Strengthening coordination with inter-agency working groups and groups from intergovernmental organization

Round-table discussions:

• UN Network of Economic Statisticians (Aishath Shahuda, Co-Chair of the United Nations Network of Economic Statisticians and Deputy Chief Statistician, Maldives Bureau of Statistics)
• Inter-secretariat Working Group on National Accounts (Herman Smith, Chief, National Accounts Section, UNSD)
• Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Gender Statistics (tbc)
• UN Committee of Experts on Big data and Data Science for Official Statistics (tbc)
• Interagency Working Group on SDGs (tbc)
• Expert Group on the integration of Statistical and Geospatial Information (tbc)
• Expert Group on Environment Statistics (Reena Shah and Emil Ivanov, Environment Statistics Section, UNSD)
• UN Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting (Ilaria Di Matteo, Chief, Environmental-Economic Accounting Section, UNSD)

15:45 – 17:00: Round table discussion and summary of the strategic discussion on business and trade statistics and way forward

9:30 – 10:50: Task Team on Statistical Business Registers

• Progress report (Hank Hermans, CBS, TT-SBR leader)
• Implementing ISIC Rev.5 on the UK SBR (Andrew Allen, ONS)
• Global initiative on unique identifiers for business (CBS/UNSD/GLEIF/UNCITRAL)

11:10 – 12:30: Task Team on International Trade Statistics

• Progress update (Cristina Neves, INE and Ouljour Houssaine, Office des Changes, TT-ITS leaders)
• Using real-time data for trade-related business decisions -- Experience from the African Trade Observatory project (Sylvain Périllat, ITC)

14:00 – 15:15: Task Team on Business Dynamics, Business Demography and Entrepreneurship

• Progress report (Gerardo Durand, INEGI, TT-BDBDE leader)
• Presentation from OECD on gender-related initiative (Michela Gamba/Ashley Ward. OECD)
• ▪ Producing new insights on entrepreneurship through data integration - Hui Min Cui, SingStat

15:30 – 16:30: Task Team on Digitalization

• Progress report (Marc Uhrbach, StatCan. TT-G&D leader)
• Update on the Task Group on measuring e-commerce value (Si Yuan, TG-eCom)
• Presentation from WTO on digitalization (tbc)

16:30 – 17:00: Work programme on Wellbeing and Sustainability

• Progress report (tbc)
• Presentation from WTO on wellbeing and sustainability initiatives (tbc)

9:30 – 12:30: Handbook/Manual update (20 minutes coffee break included)

• Possibility for the UN Manual of Business Statistics (UNSD)
  • Possible development of the UN Manual on Business Statistics (UNSD)
• Revision of IMTS and MSITS (ABS and WTO/OECD)
  • Progress update (Chief editors)
• Integration of Business and Trade Statistics / Handbook on the Integration of Business and Trade Statistics (Gerardo and Cristina)
  • Progress update (Chief editors)
  • ▪ Integrating business and trade data to profile goods exporting firms - Hui Min Cui, SingStat
• 2nd volume of the Manual of Principal Indicators on Business and Trade Statistics (Ouljour/Ying)
  • Progress update (Chief editors)
• Update on the BPM6 revision (Patrick Quill, IMF)
• Update on the SNA revision (Herman Smith, UNSD)

14:00 – 15:00: Regional/national methodological/capacity development work on business and trade statistics (UNSD)

• WTO
• ITC (Julia Spies, ITC)
• STATFRIC (Adoum Gagoloum)
• UN Regional commissions (tbc)
• UN Trade and Development (tbc)
• Feedback from capacity development activities on statistical business registers (UNSD)

15:00 – 15:30: Conclusion and way forward (UNCEBTS Chair)

Expert Group Meeting of the Task Team on International Trade Statistics

The extended meeting of the Task Team on International Trade Statistics of the UN Committee of Experts on Business and Trade Statistics will take place on the 27 September 2024 focusing on the drafting of the Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services (MSITS).

9:30 – 12:30: Morning Session (including 15 minutes coffee break)

• Welcome, follow-up matters, and updates (TT co-leads and Chief Editors)
• Progress update on drafting of Manual on Statistics of International Trade in Services (Chief Editors)
• Chapter 1 (Introduction)
• Chapter 2 (Conceptual framework)
• Chapter 3 (Transaction between residents and non-residents)
• Chapter 4 (Services supply through commercial presence)

14:00 – 16:00: Afternoon Session

• Chapter 5 (Towards a holistic measure of trade in services)
• Chapter 6 (Quantitative indicators on the international supply of services)
• Chapter 7 (Data quality and dissemination)
• Conclusion and way forward