Page 75 - Revista del Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo del INEI - Economía, Sociedad y Estadística N° 9

- Measures to defer tax obligations and social security
contributions. These measures include postponing
the payment date, the deadline for tax returns and/
or the submission of companies’ financial statements
and balance sheets. This affects the timeliness of
the information, causing delays in the reception of
tax information, as well as the data used to estimate
the associated variables in the national accounts,
such as purchases, sales, financial statements or
balance sheets.

- Foreign trade records. In general, there are no issues
with these records, except for some minor delays
in both the receipt of information and the entry of
products into the countries owing to stricter customs
controls. According to the country consultations
carried out by ECLAC, customs authorities remain
operational, even with a reduced staff. The
percentage of imputations has increased, albeit
slightly.
4. Recommendations
- Migration records. In general, there are no issues
with these records. i. Promote the adoption of online or telephone
surveys.
3. Other information
ii. Assess companies’ non-responses carefully to
- Construction surveys and agriculture and livestock determine the cause, establishing whether it is a
surveys. As these surveys are carried out in the non-response because of a failure to comply with
field (either at the building site or the farming the deadlines, or because of the temporary or
establishment) it is very difficult to get a response permanent closure of the company. Assess in each
by telephone. They are affected by restrictions on case whether or not it is appropriate to impute
the movements of interviewers. or substitute missing data . Companies’ location
5
should be taken into account in the assessment,
- International tourism surveys. These are carried as some of the most affected cities or areas in the
out face-to-face. It was possible to collect the countries of the region may have been completely
information in some countries, while the surveys closed down.
had to be cancelled in others. It is likely that the
number of cancellations of these operations will iii. Take high-level action to support efforts to
increase in the coming months, given the closure address the legal or institutional limitations that
of borders and the almost total collapse of tourist prevent NSOs and central banks accessing the
flows. administrative databases of tax or social insurance
or security systems. Under normal circumstances,
- Business tendency surveys. In some cases, delays these administrative records help to supplement
in the receipt of responses have been reported. or even replace missing information for some
industries. In the current crisis they are even more
important, given the aforementioned limitations
of the usual statistical survey methods that make
it difficult to capture the income, expenditure
and employment data of economic units. Legal

5 Under normal circumstances, missing data are usually imputed by taking the averages of the same branch and stratum or of
the closest neighbouring companies, or by using moving averages. The plausibility of using imputed data at the present time
should be assessed. 75