Relevance
The
Enhanced Economic Governance package (the so-called "six pack"
composed of five Regulations and one Directive) was adopted by the European
Parliament and Council in November 2011. Among other statistical implications, this
package includes legal requirements with implications on the collection and
dissemination of fiscal data and statistics. In particular, the Council Directive
2011/85/EU of 8 November 2011 on requirements for budgetary frameworks of the
Member States is relevant.
This Directive lays
down detailed rules concerning the characteristics of the budgetary frameworks
of the Member States. These rules are
necessary to ensure Member States’ compliance with obligations under the Treaty
of Functioning of the European Union regarding the avoidance of excessive
government deficits. The Directive lays
down rules applicable to specific elements of the budgetary frameworks, in
particular:
- systems
of budgetary accounting and statistical reporting;
- rules
and procedures governing the preparation of forecasts for budgetary planning;
- country-specific
numerical fiscal rules, such as the debt or deficit limits; and
- medium-term
budgetary frameworks;
The
reconciliation table is a requirement of Article 3 (2)
of Council Directive 85/2011 on requirements for budgetary frameworks by Member
States. It shows the methodology of transition between cash-based data and data
based on the ESA standard. With the aid
of the reconciliation table, transparency, accountability and comparability can
be better achieved. This also helps
users to grasp the conceptual differences and the transition between monthly
data used for national policy purposes and ESA-quarterly data used for the
production of national accounts and EU fiscal surveillance.
Methodological
description
Administrative
sources are used in order to compile government finance statistics. These are the Departmental Accounting System
(DAS) from the Treasury Department and the Financial Data Reporting System
(FDRS) from the Ministry of Finance.
Other ad-hoc information is also requested from the Ministry of
Finance. Data from the DAS and FDRS is available on a monthly basis. Government
Consolidated Fund cash data is coded in accordance with the ESA 2010 codes.
The outputs of the
Council Directive 85/2011 are:
- monthly
and quarterly fiscal data for the Consolidated Fund, Extra Budgetary Units and
Local Councils;
- data
on government guarantees;
- public
private partnerships;
- non-performing
loans;
- liabilities
of public corporations; and
- participation
of government in the equity of corporations
Accuracy
and reliability of data
All
accounts in the corporate chart of accounts (COA) of DAS are coded in
accordance with the requirements of the ESA 2010, and checks with previous
years and with the current economic scenario are undertaken.
For
any queries or clarifications on the FDRS templates, contact is either made
directly with the particular Extra Budgetary Unit (EBU) or with the Financial
Management and Monitoring Unit (FMMU) at the Budget Office.
Timeliness
and punctuality of data
Fiscal
data as required by Council Directive 85/2011 are updated and made available on
a monthly and quarterly basis.
Public
private partnerships, government guarantees and non-performing loans are
updated every October, liabilities of public corporations are updated every
January and participation of government in the equity of corporations is
updated every December.
Accessibility and clarity of data
Fiscal data is published on the
NSO’s website and is available through the ‘Services’ page via Council Directive 85/2011.
Coherence
and comparability/consistency of data
All
European Union member states follow the same Council Directive but data may be
not directly comparable from one country to another as these may have different
grouping of ESA classification.
Consistency in ensured with other
data submitted in tables found in the ESA 2010 transmission programme.
Data
in the ‘Government Finance Monthly’ news release is comparable from 1995
onwards. Prior to year 2008 the unit of
measure was the Maltese Lira (Lm) and the conversion rate to euro used was the
fixed rate of 0.4293.
Monthly and quarterly
fiscal data is comparable from 2014 while ESA 2010 based General
Government Sector Accounts is comparable from 2010 onwards. Consolidated Fund
data in ESA2010 codes is consistent with the data published in the Government
Finance Monthly news release.