Country experience: Spain
3.24. In Spain, Bank of Spain (BE) is responsible for the compilation and dissemination of the resident/non-resident trade in services statistics and the National Institute of Statistics (INE) is responsible for the production and dissemination of FATS. BE estimates travel services transactions between residents and non-residents on the basis of information from surveys developed by different institutions, including INE and the Institute of Tourism Studies (IET). A cooperation agreement among INE, IET and BE was established to outline the exchange of information needed to estimate the “travel” item. For its part, BE estimates the “other services” item of the BOP on the basis of a bank settlements system, combined with direct reporting for some large declarants.
3.25. The planned expiration in 2014 of the bank settlements system used by BE for compiling the “other services” item of the BOP led to a 2004 agreement with INE for the joint design of the international trade in services survey. INE is responsible for the design of the sample, the fieldwork and the tasks subsequent to data collection, including editing, imputing and grossing-up of the sampling data, while BE contributes the main framework of the survey and the reports of international services transactions obtained from its bank settlements system. In 2004, BE signed an agreement with INE for the joint design of the international trade in services survey. INE is responsible for the design of the sample, the fieldwork and the tasks subsequent to data collection (i.e., editing, imputing and grossing-up of the sampling data), while BE contributes the main framework of the survey and the reports of international services transactions obtained from its bank settlements system.
3.26. Since 2004, INE has also had a cooperation agreement with the Tax Administration Agency of Spain, which annually forwards the microdata of value-added tax (VAT) records for international goods and services transactions to INE , as well as the microdata of VAT records specifically on services transactions within the European Union. In accordance with that agreement, INE also receives annually the microdata on intra-European Union (Intrastat) and extra-European Union (Extrastat) trade operators that dispatch or bring in goods for processing or repair, which is useful for identifying the population that engages in the processing and repair services category of EBOPS 2010.
3.27. For the compilation of outward FATS, the National Statistical Institute has a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness under which the latter forwards microdata of the Foreign Investments Register to the Institute annually, so that there is no need for a specific survey.
3.28 Inward FATS are compiled on the basis of structural business surveys conducted by the National Statistical Institute in relation to the industrial, services and research and development sectors, to which is added information from the Ministry of Development on the construction sector, information from the Directorate General for Insurance and Pension Funds of the Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness on the insurance sector, and BE information on the financial sector. There are no ad hoc cooperation agreements with those administrative bodies for that exchange of information.
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