NATIONAL ACCOUNTS SYSTEM - POSSIBILITIES OF SEASONAL ANALYSIS

To achieve the objectives of the European Monetary Union, the Communitary institutions, the Governments, the European Central Bank, National Central Banks need a set of comparable, reliable statistics for a short-time analysis, on which to base their decisions. These statistics can be provided by the System of National Accounts and by one of its components, Quarterly National Accounts. Quarterly National Accounts system is guided by the same principles and definitions as the System on National Accounts, measuring the quarterly changes in macroeconomic aggregates and so allowing economic agents to study business cycles and eventual lags in the effects induced by economic shocks. In some countries, the compilation of quarterly accounts have started relatively recently, but there have been made significant progress in the treatment of some specific features of quarterly accounts, such as accounting rules, estimation methods, treatment of seasonality and consistency between quarterly and national accounts. Many countries are interested in establishing a system of quarterly national accounts or in improving their existing ones. Quarterly accounts represents a fundamental basis for taking decisions process, especially for monetary and fiscal policy at national and international level, within the Economic and Monetary Union. They also provide a basis for analysing and forecasting the business cycles.