Editorial ¾ The 12th Euroindicators Working Group: focus on Principal European Economic Indicators (PEEIs) and methodological projects..................... 2 Highlights ¾ Euro-IND statistical news............................................................................ 4 ¾ Insight on: World forecasts ......................................................................... 9 ¾ Insight on: Paul Samuelson (1915 –2009) ................................................ 11 Newsfront ¾ News from the Member States .................................................................. 15 ¾ Forthcoming events.................................................................................... 17 ¾ Cool tools and sites: Statistical publishers ............................................... 20 ¾ Webtrends................................................................................................... 26 ¾ Contact us.................................................................................................... 26 Newsletter – November/December 2009 1 Editorial ¾ The 12th Euroindicators Working Group: focus on Principal European Economic Indicators (PEEIs) and methodological projects By Justyna Gniadzik th rd th The 12 Euroindicators Working Group was held on the 3 and 4 December 2009. The working group brings together Eurostat and Commission staff (DG ECFIN) with experts from the European Central Bank (ECB), central banks, statistical offices, and international organisations such as the OECD, in order to have a complete picture from producers and users. It is in charge of coordinating dissemination, production and methodological developments related to infra-annual statistics, especially PEEIs. The 2009 working group has been the occasion to present and discuss several activities linked to Euroindicators and PEEIs and to business cycle statistical analysis, together with planned actions for 2010. The focus has been on activities aiming to reinforce Euroindicators quality monitoring and relevant methodological projects on several topics such as flash estimates and the construction of a euro area monthly indicator of economic activity. PEEIs' visibility is one of the main concerns of the Euro-indicators team, which is performing several activities in order to maintain and improve the Euro-indicators special topic of Eurostat website. In particular, 2009 has been characterized by the consolidation of the PEEIs webpage and the preparation of new quality profiles for PEEIs and a draft of a quality report (which will be soon available online) as well as by the implementation of Euro-indicators metadata in a new Euro-SDMX metadata structure. Another important initiatives fostering PEEIs visibility which have been performed in 2009 were: a regular production of the new online version of the Eurostatistics publication with a constant care to its content and presentation, preparation of several selected readings, finalisation of a PEEIs statistical guide, a new version of Business Cycle Clock, drafting of the Frequently Asked Questions, preparatory work on the extension of the statistical content of the PEEIs page. Moreover the investigating of the most suitable ways to use the new potentiality of Eurostat website and of Statistics Explained to increase the usefulness and visibility of PEEIs has been performed. The work of the Euro-indicators team in 2009 was also dedicated to several methodological projects in the context of eurotrend activities. One of the main chapter has been that of historical data and revisions; a big investment has been made in the finalization of the cleaning up exercise of the daily snapshots of the Euro-IND database in order to create a Euro-IND historical database, which is now ready for implementation and Eurostat is currently analysing technical aspects for its integration in the dissemination environment. More methodological projects were undergoing in 2009 concerning statistical business cycle analysis of the euro area, PEEIs back-calculations, turning point dating and detection, flash estimates for some PEEIs, and the definition of a methodology for the estimation of a monthly indicator of economic activity. Newsletter – November/December 2009 2 Eurostat have been very active in 2009 in the context of the two seminars organised by the UNSD in Ottawa and in Scheveningen to discuss the content and coverage of Principal Global Indicators (PGI) and various aspects related to the early monitoring of the economic situation. Unit D5 has been involved in the preparation of several documents for those seminars concerning a glossary for flash estimates, the behaviour of alternative methods for flash estimates in different cyclical phases, a monthly assessment of euro area business cycle analysis by means of coincident indicators, and an overview of Eurostat activities in the field of a timely detection of economic signals. Main outcomes of all these activities were presented during the WG meeting and widely appreciated. One of the fields of methodological analysis well progressing in 2009 was that of seasonal adjustment. The presented follow up of the implementation of ESS guidelines on seasonal adjustment were widely appreciated by the Working Group. A valuable feedback from the workshop on the implementation of the ESS guidelines on seasonal adjustment was also presented to the WG participants. Quality remains one of the main concerns of Euroindicators. The evolution of quality criteria applied to the Euro-IND database in the last year was shown; further analysis on improvement of existing measures (proxies of quality criteria) was done in 2009 and the implementation of the enhanced monitoring will be effective during 2010. PEEIs monitoring is also in the pipeline with the set of quality profiles on PEEIs ongoing and the new PEEIs quality report. A draft report covering the availability, accuracy and timeliness dimensions was presented and discussed. Euroindicators team has played an active role in the improvement of Demetra software for seasonal adjustment and in the definition of an implementation strategy for a new ESS tool for seasonal adjustment which should replace Demetra in the future. A new improved version of a tool for seasonal adjustment with many enhanced facilities and the strategy for seasonal adjustment tool development were presented and widely appreciated by the Working Group. The meeting was also the occasion for some Member States to present their recent achievements: Denmark presented the dynamically updated publications on Statistics Denmark’s homepage, Netherlands - the new developments in monitoring the Dutch business cycle and Italy - a methodology for the production of monthly figures from the quarterly Labour Force Survey data. The WG recognised the relevance of national practices' presentations as an important issue of interchange between countries. Member States were encouraged to present national practices during the Working Group meetings in the future. The meeting ended with a session on news from data production units – Short-term Business Statistics on Introducing NACE rev 2 in EU Short-term Business Statistics and from Labour Market on Methodology for the calculation of monthly unemployment rates. For further information please consult the Euro-indicators/PEEIs website. Newsletter – November/December 2009 3 Highlights ¾ Euro-IND statistical news Balance of Payments EU27 current account deficit 33.3 bn euro; 14.2 bn euro surplus on trade in services The EU27 external current account recorded a deficit of 33.3 billion euro in the third quarter of 2009, compared with a deficit of 72.6 bn in the third quarter of 2008 and a deficit of 49.2 bn in the second quarter of 2009. In the third quarter of 2009, the EU27 external balance of trade in services recorded a surplus of 14.2 bn euro, compared with a surplus of 20.1 bn in the third quarter of 2008 and a surplus of 17.5 bn in the second quarter of 2009. These provisional data, issued by Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, will be subject to revision. First estimate for the third quarter of 2009 – News release N°178/2009 – 11 December 2009 Consumer prices Euro area annual inflation up to 0.5%; EU up to 1.0% Euro area annual inflation was 0.5% in November 2009, up from -0.1% in October. A year earlier the rate was 2.1%. Monthly inflation was 0.1% in November 2009. EU annual inflation was 1.0% in November 2009, up from 0.5% in October. A year earlier the rate was 2.8%. Monthly inflation was 0.2% in November 2009. These figures come from Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities. Inflation in the EU Member States In November 2009, the lowest annual rates were observed in Ireland (-2.8%), Estonia (- 2.1%) and Latvia (-1.4%), and the highest in Hungary (5.2%), Romania (4.6%) and Poland (3.8%). Compared with October 2009, annual inflation fell in one Member State, remained stable in three and rose in twenty-three. The lowest 12-month averages up to November 2009 were registered in Ireland (-1.4%), Portugal (-0.8%) and Spain (-0.2%), and the highest in Romania (5.7%), Lithuania (4.8%) and Latvia (4.2%). Euro area The main components with the highest annual rates in November 2009 were alcohol & tobacco (4.5%), miscellaneous goods & services (2.2%) and education (1.6%), while the lowest annual rates were observed for food (-1.2%), housing (-1.0%) and communications (- 0.7%). Concerning the detailed sub-indices, tobacco (+0.13 percentage points), fuels for transport (+0.12) and rents (+0.08) had the