Travel in Balance of Payments Statistics
Transcription
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.