for the proper interpretation and analysis of economic and financial developments, and help governments and market participants to steer the course for sustainable development.
Besides commitment to comply with international standards and active participation in regional and international co-operative efforts, Singapore is actively reviewing changes and improvements in its statistical systems with the view of making available not only more but better quality statistics on a timely basis. The launch of a new major survey on trade in international services is a case in point.
The initiation of major surveys and participation in regional and co-operative programmes and efforts are not without constraints.-In Singapore's case, the shortage of staff required to undertake the tedious and labour-intensive work limits the number of additional surveys or collections that can be introduced. In addition, there is the problem of the imposition of further burden on survey respondents. These problems can be alleviated but not eliminated by greater use of computer technology, and increased use of administrative data. For countries who have yet to develop an efficient and effective survey infrastructure, the requirements for them to provide more timely, more disaggregated and more accurate statistics would be even more difficult.
Compliance with international standards and statistical frameworks is not easy under any circumstances. While SNA93 and BPM5 have recognised the rapidly changing nature of financial services, there are still several contentious issues. In Singapore's case, the relatively large share of financial services in Singapore's economy has increased the need for improvements in our ability to measure the output of financial services. For example, an issue that comes to mind is the treatment of trading gains arising from the trading of foreign exchange and financial derivatives. Treatment of such gains as income would bring them into GDP, whereas they would be excluded from GDP if regarded as capital gains.
These issues and others relating to the statistical measurement of financial derivatives are complex and not easy to resolve. They are currently being examined by the IMF, which has set up an Expert Group on the Statistical
