In an increasingly politically fragmented yet economically and environmentally interconnected world, external statistics are paramount to address new developments in international economic relations arising from global challenges. They are the lenses through which to observe the main drivers of the global economy, ranging from globalisation, digitalisation and climate change to the new trends in international trade and financial flows shaped by the fault lines of geopolitics.
Yet in an uncertain world changing with unprecedented speed, external statistics need to quickly adapt to evolving user needs, especially for policymaking. This calls for regularly revisiting statistical concepts, experimenting with new indicators and harvesting the deluge of data arising from the advance of technology. Considerable work has been undertaken over recent decades to fill data gaps and, perhaps more significantly, update the methodological framework and ensure consistency within and across macroeconomic accounts. But much more work lies ahead despite strained resources.
First, in terms of analytical and measurement needs, a focal point for external statistics is to better capture the impacts of globalisation, digitalisation and climate change. This entails a certain number of actions, such as improving the coverage of large multinational enterprises (MNEs) and special purpose entities (SPEs), designing approaches beyond residency-based concepts to map financial flows, innovating measurement techniques for digital and intangible assets, and integrating climate change factors into external statistics.
In addition, the statistical community aims at improving the consistency, comparability and relevance of external statistics, both in terms of methodology and data. The joint revision of the System of National Accounts (SNA) and the Balance of Payments Manual (BPM) in 2025 is a major milestone in this regard. Yet more can be done, especially to achieve consistent implementation, namely in the recording of cross-border flows or transactions between residents and non-residents, to ensure integration of data sources and to streamline coordination within the statistical system, particularly among central banks and national statistical offices.
More broadly, external statistics need to be “fit for multiple needs” to stay relevant in response to the rising demand for multidimensional statistical information. In practice, this means that they have to serve and swiftly adapt to the new demands across the wide range of users. A telling case is the key role played by external statistics to navigate the complexities of geopolitics in the wake of recent tensions and document the resilience of global value chains amidst increased fragmentation and reshoring patterns.
A related lesson is the need to foster experimental external statistics to face growing, pressing and timely data needs. This includes experimenting with new approaches tailored to analytical requirements, designing innovative methods and testing unexplored data sources. The trade-off is to balance such experimental indicators with reliable, accurate, high-quality and trustworthy statistics.
Harnessing alternative and big data sources for producing official statistics on the external sector is also important. This may not only aid in overcoming sudden stops in the provision of traditional indicators, such as those experienced during the Covid-19 crisis in 2020–22. It can also help enhance and complement conventional sources. Examples such as geospatial data, mobile phone records, credit card transactions, securities, credit and business registers illustrate ways to improve the estimation of balance of payments (BOP) statistics.
Further, innovation is not an option, rather a necessity. Keeping abreast of changes, including advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), may yield significant advantages, particularly by enabling producers to tap into the abundance of new data types, enhance data integration and facilitate the communication of external statistics. New techniques to collect data, such as web scraping, also play a growing role in reducing the data reporting burden while improving timeliness overall. Yet, a certain number of challenges and risks cannot be ignored: concerns on “black box” issues, misuse of data, increased costs and ethical and privacy risks may be particularly challenging when it comes to adopting these novel technologies.
Lastly, the growing demand and supply of statistics undoubtedly require stronger international statistical cooperation to foster data stewardship, sharing and a better centralisation of statistical collections. Efforts to improve data interoperability, usability and reusability are key ingredients for sound external statistics, particularly because statistical offices and central banks may have shared or strongly connected responsibilities in the compilation process. Regional and global business registers, with the help of global identifiers and harmonised collections, should also be regarded as a priority for identifying or “profiling” MNEs’ attributes.
Taken all together, these recommendations call for a clear and comprehensive roadmap for enhancing information on the external sector in the years ahead, based on a shared vision to leverage innovation, promote international cooperation and maintain trust in official statistics.