Regulation Measures on Data Collection and Compilation Regaeding International Investment Position (IIP) Statisitics : Case Study Private Non Bank Corporates
Abstract:
International Investment Position (TIP) of a country is an account showing the stock outstanding position of external assets (or claims) as well as external liabilities of an economy, with regards to non-residents, at a point of time. The TIP statistics could be divided according to major economic sectors; namely, the public sector (i.e., the central government (through the Ministry of Finance and the monetary authority) and private sector, which composes of bank sector (i.e., commercial banks plus the Bangkok International Banking Facilities (BIBF5)) and private non-bank corporate sector. At present, those TIP statistics corresponding to the public sector as well as banks are all filly captured under our database system. Nevertheless, the remaining missing component is the one associated with private non-bank sector, in which only partial information on these cross-border transactions could be gathered from limited available sources. Once be fully captured, the International Investment Position data under the private non-bank sector would reveal Thailand's complete external financial position (which would cover the external claims, foreign liabilities as well as those financial derivatives transactions done between Thai resident vs. non-resident counterparties). The information obtained would ultimately serve as major inputs for future appropriate monetary policy implementation as well as the establishment of the economic early warning system (external sector) in order to prevent Thai economy from confronting similar type of financial crisis as experienced during 1997. In addition, these TIP statistics could provide useful benchmark thr the private sector to carry out intelligent investment decisions accordingly. The Bank of Thailand is well regarded as the sole pioneer to collect and compile the TIP statistics on the private non-bank sector. Great emphasis has been placed upon the cross-border transactions that involve foreign investments or any other types of financial transactions relating to non-resident investors. A full range of comprehensive survey forms were designed, from which Bank of Thailand then began to conduct surveys directly to selected group of private non-bank companies, with great advises and technical supports from the Australia Bureau of Statistics. Nevertheless, despite its well-established survey system, the aforementioned surveys on lIP statistics seems to yield not-so-cooperative responses from the private non-bank providers. This was mainly clue to the fact that Thailand, at present, has no direct rules or regulations enforcing the surveyed companies to disclosure their positions to the authority and hence low response rates were yielded as well as poor data quality and reliability were simply unavoidable. The role of laws and regulations for lIP survey becomes a very important issue. According to the studies regarding the data collection and compilation of TIP statistics in other countries, it was found that most countries do have some strong legal structure support, which allows the authorities to obtain all necessary information from the private entities. Each country has different types of law and regulation to implement, depending upon which local authority(s) or institution(s) are responsible for such TIP data collection. Those regulations are; for instance, such as the Statistics Act, the Foreign Exchange Control Act, the Ministry of Commerce Act and the Commercial Bank Act. For Thailand, the Foreign Exchange Control Act (BE. 2485) empowers the Bank of Thailand to enforce all foreign exchange transactions, especially those done between Thai resident & non-resident counterparties to report all related details regarding such activities. Meanwhile, punishment roles are also set regarding any intentional data mis-reporting on providers as well as related authorized staffs. Data obtained would ultimately complete the picture of the International Investment Position (TIP) under private non-bank sector. The crucial point is that appropriate law enforcement implementation would ensure all lIP surveys be fully completed with high response rate while all data obtained would be very accurate, consistent as well as highly reliable. Nevertheless, additional measures such as maintaining good relationship between the Bank of Thailand's staffs and private non-bank data providers is a must, to create incentives in terms of continual data supports for mutual cooperation benefits from the compilation of the International Investment Position.