Online Program

Toward the New ‘CBS-DNB Finances of Enterprises and Balance of Payments’ Survey (307985)

Keywords: The design of a new complex survey for the very large non-financial enterprises in the Netherlands: process, methods, and lessons learned

As an open economy the Netherlands has a significant presence abroad: not only in terms of goods and services, but also in financial terms. Comprehensive information and statistics about the development of our cross-border economic relationships are crucial to both the public and private sector, as well as research, e.g. close monitoring of balances of payments by the European Commission to identify structural imbalances.

Both the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) and Statistics Netherlands (CBS) have a statutory duty in producing such information. Until 2018 four separate surveys were conducted. Consequently, the results were not consistent, were produced at high costs and resulted in high response burden. At enterprise level, the data collected by CBS and DNB, were not consistent, even after large efforts in data cleaning. To achieve consistent macroeconomic statistics, it was decided to combine methods, expertise, processes and data sources between DNB and CBS. The process started with developing a new combined data model: a description of the required data at conceptual level. This data model served as the starting point for the survey design.

This project is one of a kind. The new design may be of interest to other NSIs, as well as Central Banks. As far as we know, this approach has not been implemented in other countries. Furthermore, this session discusses insights and lessons learned that are relevant for business survey design in general, like: • Relationship management with large enterprises • Insights in internal data collection processes in large enterprises • Methods to develop business survey questionnaires • Tailoring the questionnaire and communication strategy design to the business context.

During the presentation, we will discuss in more detail the motivation for this new survey, the new data model, and whether the results matched our expectations. This is a joint presentation by Statistics Netherlands and the Dutch Central Bank.