A signposted itinerary

ERETES offers users a five-phase signposted itinerary to compile the national accounts of an accounting year.

itinéraire balisé

Phase 1: local installation

The module is portable; this means that it can be installed in any country that wishes to adopt the proposed process of compiling accounts. Each country is unique, both in terms of its economy, society or institutions and as regards the specific characteristics of its statistical apparatus. At the moment of its installation, the module has to be adapted to those national characteristics. This is mainly done through the choice of the local classifications.

There is also room for some flexibility in implementing the method proposed by the module, in deciding locally which components of the central framework to choose, etc.

This stage is a prerequisite for using ERETES and occurs only once.

Phase 2 : Collection and processing of statistical sources

The task of compiling National Accounts relies entirely on the availability of statistical data which take account of the full economic life of the country. Of course, there are areas which escape the statistician's reach. But whatever exists should be used, because different approaches to a single phenomenon can frequently yield additional information.

The quality of each source must be verified. In parallel, the content of each source will be analysed, so that it can be transposed according to the classifications of National Accounts. Lastly, to be incorporated into the database, the data must be coded according to the attributes stipulated by the module.

Particular attention must be paid to the accounting data supplied by the institutional units.

Each source must be processed in its entirety, irrespective of where it will be used later.

Phase 3: Preliminary pre-reconciliation

This next phase helps to achieve better preparation of sources for use in the decentralised tasks of phase 4.

Pre-reconciliation is necessary :

to make the sources compatible with the requirements of the National Accounts, in particular by taking account of data from other sources (e.g. inventories and changes in inventories)
to achieve a more homogeneous picture of the available data, by reconciling various sources (e.g. jobs and labour)
to break down data at the most detailed level of industries, products, transactions or sectors wherever possible (e.g. taxes on production and imports).

For the field of the SUT (supply/use table), pre-reconciliation covers transactions only.

Phase 4 : Analitical working out, compatibilisation

This new phase marks the beginning of the active phase of compatibilisation between all existing sources, and of the setting up of estimations for the parts of economy which statistics know poorly or even do not know at all. This work is done by alternating two complementary and iterative approaches ;

This new phase marks the beginning of the active phase of A decentralized approach, which confronts the gathered data according to several axes :

in the field of the SUT, by supply-use balances(SUB) on the one hand and production and operating accounts by industry on the other ;
in the field of the IEAT , the ‘who-to-whom’ matrix helps to achieve compatibilisation for each transaction.

These tasks are carried out on local posts.

a centralised approach, which makes it possible to validate the proposals arising out of the decentralised work and to compare the results obtained with the data of institutional sector accounts.

Throughout this analytical approach, the maintenance of divergences between the various points of view will however continue to be accepted:

In respect of the SUT, by accepting a difference between supply and demand (visible in the use matrix for intermediate consumption),
Outside the SUT, by using transitory positions

Phase 5 : Synthesis

Once a satisfactory quality has been arrived at for the industries, the products, the transactions and the institutional sectors, we move on to the synthesis phase, which involves completing the following tasks :

reconciliation of the use matrix
establishing correspondence with the sector accounts
reconciliation of the Integrated Economic Accounts Table,
finalising the tables of the central framework : Supply/Use Table and Integrated Economic Accounts Table
formatting of results for publication,
data preparation to commence the accounts of the following year.