OECD UNITED NATIONS JOINT OECD/ESCAP MEETING ON NATIONAL ACCOUNTS System of National Accounts: Five Years On. Bangkok, 4-8 May 1998

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1 OECD UNITED NATIONS ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMISSION FOR ASIA AND THE PACIFIC JOINT OECD/ESCAP MEETING ON NATIONAL ACCOUNTS 1993 System of National Accounts: Five Years On Bangkok, 4-8 May 1998 Title: Problems of Institutional Sectoring of the Economy in Bangladesh Agenda item: 5 Author: Md. Zobdul Hoque Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) Bangladesh

2 PROBLEMS OF INSTITUTIONAL SECTORING OF THE ECONOMY IN BANGLADESH Introduction 1 Under the rules of business of the Government, Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) as the lead statistical agency is in-charge of compiling national accounts of Bangladesh. Currently BBS is implementing the priority features of the SNA-93 in a step-by-step process with assistance from the Asian Development Bank. Institutional sectoring of the economy is a key requirement for compiling institutional sector accounts of SNA93. This paper highlights some of the problems BBS is facing in sectorizing the country s economy in the line of SNA-93. The basic objective of sectorization is to group together of the resident institutional units with similar economic objectives, functions and types of behavior. The SNA-93 recognizes five mutually exclusive institutional sectors: The non-financial corporations sector The financial corporations sector The general government sector The non-profit institutions serving household sector (NPISH) The household sector. 2 The five sectors together make up the total economy thus providing first level sectoring. Depending on the institutional arrangements, data availability, needs of policy makers and type of analysis, SNA recommends country specific sub-sectoring of the institutional sectors. The sub-sectors provide second level sectoring of the economy. Except for the households, the other four institutional sectors consist of legal entities created for the purpose of production. 3 In Bangladesh households constitute the dominant institutional sector reflecting the relatively underdeveloped state of the economy. The other four institutional sectors also exist. However, the main problem is delineation of their boundaries correctly in the line of SNA-93. General government sector 4 Identification of the boundaries of the General government and Financial corporations sectors is relatively easy. For the purpose of institutional sectoring, the general government of Bangladesh comprises the central government and local government units. The other two sub-sectors of SNA-93 namely state government and social security funds are absent in Bangladesh. Compared to the stage of economic development, status of the economy, the central government in Bangladesh is a large and relatively complex but identifiable, sub-sector. It is composed of a group of ministries (37) divided into divisions (42), department and directorates (326). 5 The state owned enterprises (SOEs), known as autonomous corporations comprise non-financial and financial including the central bank (Bangladesh bank), are quasi corporations that have complete set of accounts and are therefore separate entities not included in the central government sub-sector. Local government sub-sector consists of local government units that are separate institutional units and include metropolitan corporations, pourashavas or municipalities, district, thana and union councils. The NPIs such as primary schools, night schools, dispensaries health clinics etc. controlled and financed by the local government units are included in the local government sub-sector. 6 The general government also includes the non-market NPIs that are controlled and mainly financed by government units. Thus public universities and such other institutions are included in general government sector. Availability and access to annual central government budgets facilitates 2

3 identifications of the central government sub-sector boundary. Annual budgets are also prepared for the individual local government units so that identification of the local government boundary is also feasible. However, in view of the large number of local government units at the lowest level (union council), BBS resorts to annual sampling of union council budgets as recommended by the GFS manual, to arrive at union council aggregates. Financial corporations sector 7 Financial corporations sector is the other organized and properly supervised institutional sector in Bangladesh, so that identification of its boundary for the purpose of institutional sectoring is relatively easy. The Bangladesh Financial sector consists of two main sub-sectors - banking sub-sector and the insurance companies sub-sector. 8 The banking sub-sector is divided further into the following mutually exclusive sub-groups. i. The central bank (Bangladesh Bank) ii. Deposit money banks comprising nationalized commercial and private commercial banks. iii. Specialised banks such as Investment corporation of Bangladesh, Industrial development bank, Agriculture development bank, unemployment bank etc. iv. Financial auxiliaries such as Grameen bank, stock exchanges, financial leasing companies, foreign exchange dealers, cooperative banks etc. 9 Bangladesh Bank acts as the regulatory and supervising institution of the banking sub-sector on behalf of the central government. Excluded from the sector are individual money lenders who belong to the household sector if they qualify as financial intermediary. The private commercial banks are separated into domestic and foreign controlled banks. 10 There is no institutional pension fund in the country. The insurance sub-sector of the company, therefore, consists of insurance companies separated into life and non-life insurance companies. As in case of banking sector, the insurance sub-sector distinguishes nationalised life from private life insurance companies. Private life insurance companies are again separated into domestic and foreign resident companies. There is no foreign non-life insurance company operating in the country. 11 The other sub-sector is composed of the two stock exchanges (Dhaka and Chittagong), financial leasing companies, foreign exchange dealers, numerous but regularly audited cooperative banks and societies and special auxiliaries like Grameen bank that are engaged in micro-credit programme as part of promoting employment and social welfare. Non-financial corporations sector 12 The main problems of sectorization in Bangladesh relate to sectorization of the non-financial corporations sector and the household sector. As defined by the SNA-93, non-financial corporations sector includes non-financial corporations, quasi-corporations and market NPIs. 13 The company law of Bangladesh divides non-financial corporations into two categories - Public limited companies - ie. those with shares subscribed by the public, and private limited companies whose shares are not publicly subscribed and non-transferable. The public limited companies are further subdivided into limited liability companies, Guaranteed limited liability companies and unlimited liability companies. Because of non-existence of register of business enterprises it is difficult to identify the nonfinancial corporations fully. Only the large public limited companies that are listed on the stock exchanges, (Dhaka or Chittagong) can be recognized. The limited companies are required by law to register with the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies (RJSC). However, registration often means intention so that many of the registered companies are found to be non-operating or non existing. Again 3

4 the RJSC does not properly maintain any list of the operating corporations; what is available in the form of a register is in fact a cumulative list (or stock-list) of corporations, many of which are not operational. As a result list of the registrar is also of no use in sectorizing purposes. 14 BBS is aware of the problem of identification of corporations for the purpose of sectorization and is exploring alternative sources like the recently compiled registrar of VAT (Value added tax) paying enterprises of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) that lists nearly 105,000 large and small enterprises (1997) including the limited companies, numbering around eight hundred. 15 The quasi-corporations included in the non-financial corporations sector divides into two classes - Government owned quasi-corporations (other than financial) or the SOE (state owned enterprises) and household owned quasi-corporations that are operated as if they are privately owned corporations, i.e. they are sufficiently self-contained and independent or separate from the owner and keep complete sets of accounts including balance sheet. Again in absence of proper register it is practically impossible to identify the quasi-corporations owned by the households. The Census of Manufacturing Industries (CMI) does maintain a list of enterprises that, however, covers only manufacturing activities and it is not possible to identify the household quasi-corporations engaged in manufacturing activities from the CMI listing. 16 To overcome the problem of systematic identifications of enterprises for the purpose of developing a comprehensive business register covering all ISIC sectors of activities including services as performed by the private corporations, BBS is planning to conduct a census of non-economic activities in year 2000 in all urban areas where such activities are mainly concentrated. The census will also help identify the business NPIs that belong to the non-financial corporations sector. 17 Identification of business NPIs that belong to non-financial corporations sector (and also the financial corporations sector) is not very difficult - for one thing, their member is relatively small and all of them as required by the regulation federated to the apex organisation, Federation of the Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industries (FBCCI). Various trade and craft associations are also federated to the FBCCI which maintains an updated list. Household sector 18 The household sector of Bangladesh is another large and complex institutional sector and the institutional units or households are engaged not only in final consumption but also a variety of significant productive activities that cover almost all the ISIC major sectors except of course general government and financial intermediations. (Lending own funds by charging interests by households as is the dominant form in Bangladesh, is not considered financial intermediation by SNA). 19 For the purpose of sectorizations, households in Bangladesh consist of all resident dwelling households and covers around 98% of the resident populations of the country. The resident population outside dwelling households consists of homeless or floating population and institutional households comprising jails, hospitals, hotels, messes etc. The SNA suggests coverage of the total resident population in the household sector. However complexity of constructing frame for floating population and of the transitory nature of the institutional population adds to the problem of including institutional and floating population in the household sector accounts through generation of data through household expenditure survey (HES) and other household based surveys. Some of the resident institution population such as inmates of jails, government hospitals etc. can be covered through data from the government budgets and accounts. 20 The main problem however, is defining the boundary of the household sector by identifying the unincorporated enterprises including unincorporated partnerships owned by the households that operate as if they are privately owned corporation and on that count belong to the non-financial corporation sector. To distinguish such quasi-corporations from their household owners it is necessary to ensure that 4

5 such quasi-corporations keep complete set of accounts and balance sheet. As pointed out earlier, in absence of register capacity it is not possible to identify properly such quasi-corporations. In absence of such identification, the BBS currently identifies the boundary of household sector residually, i.e. by excluding all Government owned quasi-corporations including state owned enterprises (SOEs) all financial corporations; general government units, large private owned corporations, business NPIs and identifiable NPISH units. The producing households include those that have household premise based or.according to ISIC activities. 21 For sub-sectoring of household sector SNA recommends three main criteria - sub-sectoring on the basis of grouping of households by their largest source of income, by reference person s characteristics or by using criteria that apply to households as a whole such as urban and rural resident etc. BBS uses all the three criteria in sub-sectoring household sector of Bangladesh. Non-profit institutions serving households (NPISH) sector 22 NPISH is another fairly large and complex institutional sector in Bangladesh whose precise boundary and basic data generation is still a problem. The NPISH sector consists of a large number of diverse institutional units that SNA divides into two main groups - membership organisations and charity and welfare organisations. In Bangladesh the latter type of organisations particularly religious charities (Waqf, mosques etc.) and welfare organizations like NGO s predominate. Again, the main problem is absence of register capacity and data generation. To mitigate the data gaps and to develop a preliminary NPISH sector account in the line of SNA-93, BBS has recently conducted a nationwide survey on NPISH units using area and list frames. The various listings that are maintained by Government regulatory agencies like Waqf Commissioner, NGO Affairs Bureau, Ministry of social and cultural affairs and Ministry of labour are not complete, they are rarely updated and are often found to be overlapping Conclusions 23 Our brief review of the problem of institutional sectoring in Bangladesh for the purpose of SNA-93 shows that the problems are primarily two - lack of register capacity and sector specific data generation instruments. Except for the relatively small and organised sectors like general government and the Financial corporate sectors, the problems are most severe with respect to the non-financial corporation, household and NPISH sectors. The various administrative or statistical frames such as VAT list of enterprises, CMI list of manufacturing establishments, or RJSC are neither exhaustive in coverage, mutually exclusive nor updated. As a short term measure, BBS is developing an Integrated Business Register (IBR) based on the VAT list of public and private limited companies for covering the privately owned corporations that belong to the non-financial corporations sector and conduct a pilot IBES (Integrated Business Enterprise Survey) to mitigate data gaps and test the strategy of data generation. 24 In the long run, BBS is working towards development of register capacity covering non-financial corporations and NPISH sectors. Towards this aim BBS plans to conduct the census of Non-firm economic activities in the year Since development of Business Register Capacity for proper institutional sectorization in the line of SNA-93 is key problem in countries like Bangladesh, we recommend that ESCAP organises a series of training workshops and prepare training materials on the development of Business Register Capacity. 5