Travel in Balance of Payments Statistics

Travel in Balance of Payments Statistics
Branimir Gruic
Croatian National Bank, Statistics Department
P.O. Box 603
10000 Zagreb, Croatia
[email protected]
Igor Jemric
Croatian National Bank, Statistics Department
P.O. Box 603
10000 Zagreb, Croatia
[email protected]
1. Introduction
As part of international economic relations statistics, Croatian National Bank (CNB) is
responsible for Balance of Payments Statistics (BOP).
BOP statistics is based on official data sources (like Croatian Bureau of Statistics (CBS)) and
data compiled inside CNB (from International Transactions Reporting System, specialised
statistical surveys, data on reserves assets etc.). Having in mind importance of tourism revenues for
Croatia, CNB in co-operation with research agencies conduct Survey on expenditures of foreign
travellers in Croatia and Croatian travellers' abroad. This text concentrates on BOP revenues
(credits) from travel.
2. The Survey
Croatian Institute for Tourism (CIT) developed the original methodology (met1) for the
Survey. All border crossings (road, sea, air) are grouped according to type and geographical criteria.
Each group is represented by one border crossing on which foreign travellers are surveyed when
leaving Croatia, in accordance with previously defined plan. Survey's questions are related to total
expenses in Croatia, country of residence, way of travel (aeroplane, car, bus, truck), motive, length
of stay and accommodation (paid or unpaid).
Stratified sample is used. Each stratum is based on type of border crossing and type of day
(working or weekend). For each month (m), each answer j about total expenses (cm,i,j) is classified in
stratum (there are Lm stratums) and weighted by the ratio of total (Nm,i) and surveyed (nm,i) number
of visitors in stratum i. Aggregate monthly expenditure equals sum of stratum's expenditure, while
average monthly expenditure ( Cm ) is a fraction of total expenditures and number of foreign visitors
in the month:
Lm
(1)
Cm =
nL
N m, i
∑∑ n
i =1 j =1
* cm ,i, j
m ,i
Lm
∑N
m, i
i =1
3. Problems of the methodology and possible solutions
Three times a year estimated revenues for each group's road representative are checked with
second largest road border crossing. As a result, we were faced with different estimates of
expenditures and different structure (country, motive, accommodation etc.), so we have concluded
that groups have not been as homogenous as we wanted them to be.
Beside that, number of nights in commercial accommodations (hotels, motels, camps etc.)
according to the official CBS data and number of nights in the same accommodations from the
Survey are different (CBS's number is few times lower). Fortunately, it is possible to identify
distribution by countries and type of accommodation in official data, so by combining selection of
questionnaires with (1) the official data of overnights by countries and (2) the same number derived
from the Survey, we were able to compare estimated average expenditure and variances. Large
differences between them, together with changing maximum variance proved that the choice of
weights has large effect on our estimates.
During 2002 total number of foreign travellers was alternatively calculated. For each type of
road vehicle (car, bus or truck), it was a product of number of foreign-plated vehicles and average
number or passengers in the vehicle. These estimates (met2) are a bit lower then those of met1.
2002 Travel, revenues
1,80
1,60
bln. USD
1,40
1,20
1,00
0,80
0,60
0,40
0,20
0,00
1
2
3
4
met1
5
6
7
met2
8
9
10
control
11
12
month
Figure 1. Revenues from foreign travellers in 2002
Unknown structure of foreign travellers was estimated from the Survey results. This
approximation lowers quality of our estimates because it depends on segment of surveyed travellers.
In order to improve quality of output data, partial counting of foreign-plated vehicles will be
introduced during 2003 in order to gather more data on structure of foreign travellers. As a result,
for 2004 there will be more stratums (each of present stratums will be divided according to
breakdown by countries). Also, there will be new classification of border crossings into more
homogenous groups (during 2003 each group will be surveyed on 2 or 3 border crossings).
REFERENCES
1. European Commission, EUROSTAT (2000), Methodological manual on the design and
implementation of surveys on inbound tourism, Luxembourg
2. OECD (1996), OECD Tourism Statistics: Design and Application for Policy, Paris
RÉSUMÉ
Dans cet article on présente la méthodologie et des problèmes d'estimation des revenues
enregistrés dans le bilan des payment sous "voyages". On identifi des problèmes de groupement des
passages routières de la frontière, du choix des présentateurs des groupes, les differences entre les
données sur le nombre officiel des touristes et les résultats de l'enquête. On a introduit une nouvelle
méthode selon laquelle on a augmenté le numéro des présentateurs de chaque groupe pour
contrôler les groupes quelles déjà existent et pour créer des nouvelles groupes. Le numération de
contrôle du trafic rendrera possible meilleure éstimation de la structure des touristes selon les pays
de leurs origines.