Ashgabat, 16 October 2019: A joint project between the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the State Committee on Statistics of Turkmenistan (Turkmenstat) continues cooperation on exhaustive GDP assessment. Partners invited international expert Alexander Surinov to develop and discuss a methodology for evaluating insurance services for calculating GDP.

Employees of the State Statistics Committee of Turkmenistan, the Ministry of Finance and Economics, the Central Bank, the State Insurance Organization and other insurance organizations of Turkmenistan came together to discuss the draft methodology for reflecting insurance services in GDP.

“The SNA - 2008 proposes to calculate the output of insurance services (except for life insurance) in three ways. It is believed that it is theoretically more correct to use the expectation method, the essence of which “consists in using the model of expected payments (ex-ante) used by insurance corporations in determining the amount of premiums based on their assumptions. But in statistics it is important to have the results of calculations obtained by all three methods to identify discrepancies,” said Alexander Surinov during the meeting.

The introduction of a methodology for evaluating insurance services for an exhaustive assessment of GDP will allow to switch to the calculation of insurance services in accordance with the new economic situation, the latest achievements of methodological studies and standards of  SNA -2008. As a result of Mr. Surinov’s visit, the draft methodology was completed and a statistical form was proposed, including indicators for the correct calculation of insurance services.