To support the Cook Islands Statistics Office (CISO) in improving its external sector statistics (ESS) the staff of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave the office technical assistance in the form of a week long workshop. The last BOP mission was conducted in 2018 and staff welcomed the review from IMF TA Emma Ranz. Emma worked closely with the Balance of Payments (BOP) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) compilers as well as the chief statistician to review the data sources and compilation methods used to put together the financial account of the balance of payments (BOP) and the international investment position (IIP) statement. The overall feedback of the mission is positive “The mission was very productive, but one week was not enough” says a senior statistician.

From this mission an updated IIP statement was prepared using the data sources available for each institutional sector. A key point learnt was to work together with the IIP Statement by sector. A senior statistician reports that “The Mission has been very beneficial in terms of improving & reviewing the IIP Statement and part of the BOP but one week was not enough for this mission. “

At the end of the mission the CISO were recommended to clarify some of the items included in the BOP survey form and include extra financial tools to get more information from this institutional sector. Some of the other businesses only provided partial data. Compilers should identify businesses that contribute the most information to the BOP and try to put more effort into getting data from them. The mission also recommended to send a simpler BOP survey form to companies, requesting only quarterly external transactions, to obtain the foreign transactions of this sector.

Cook Islands Statistics now looks to continue the momentum from the mission and are eager to maintain the high quality and standards of how the BOP is collected, compiled and reported.

Media enquiries

For any enquiries please contact the Statistics Office at [email protected] or call in at 29511.