Russia Group Workshop

Tabata Shinichiro


The Russia Workshop, held on September 14-15 at the Sano Shoin, Hitotsubashi University, was notable for the high levels of research presented. I can state that I have not participated in any other Workshop that was quite so rewarding as this one. The Workshop included five members from the Russian Statistical Committee, and 2 members of the CIS Statistical Committee.

I have been conducting research for some time on the Soviet and Russian economy using official Soviet and Russian statistics, but it was only recently that I became well-acquainted with the compilers of these statistics. I pulled out my old appointment book and discovered that I had met one of the participants of the Workshop, Mr. Ivanov and Ms. Khomenko of the CIS Statistics Committee, around four years ago, September 18, 1995. On the next day, the 19th, I met for the first time Mr. Ponomarenko of the Russian Statistical Committee (who is currently at the Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University). At the time, I was in Moscow for a two-month stay, and had asked an official sent from the Economic Planning Agency to the Japanese Embassy in Moscow to arrange these meetings.

Mr. Ivanov is the Vice-Chairman of the CIS Statistics Committee but was stationed for a long time in New York at the United Nations during the 1960s. As a result, his English is excellent, and his diplomatic skills very polished. Mr. Ivanov also worked with Japanese officials at the United Nations, and developed a very good impression of Japan as a result. Perhaps because of this, when I met him four years ago, he was very kind in all his responses. After the first meeting, I have made sure to meet with him several times each year, whether in Moscow or Kunitachi (Hitotsubashi). His main research assistant, Ms. Khomenko, has always been patient and kind in all her answers to my numerous obscure and arcane questions.

The CIS Statistics Committee is composed of personnel who were part of the Soviet Statistics Committee, which ceased to exist in 1991. Its main role is to provide advice to the statistical organizations in each of the countries of the CIS. Starting in the 1990s, the former Soviet Union, in addition to the transition to the market economy, began a conversion process from the MPS (Material Productions System) to the SNA (System of National Accounts) system of statistics. This process required the participation and assistance of specialists.[1] Mr. Ivanov, with his experience working at the UN and with his deep knowledge of SNA statistics, was just the right person for this project.

Mr. Ponomarenko is one of the key figures in the Russian Statistics Committee for the calculations of SNA national income statistics. Four years ago, he was introduced to me as the person who knew everything about Russian SNA statistics. September 1995 was also when the World Bank and the Russian Statistical Committee had just completed a joint project to overhaul the initial GDP statistics that had begun to be compiled. A meeting between the Russian Statistics Committee and the World Bank was to be held a few days after the day I first met Mr. Ponomarenko, and he explained to me in detail the agreed upon adjusted values and methodologies to be confirmed at this meeting. In addition, he was kind enough to provide me with 200 pages or so of materials. I recall taking these back to my Moscow apartment like treasures, and becoming completely absorbed in them.[2] The reason why I have introduced these memories at such length is that I wanted to emphasize that at the time (although it was just four years ago), I could not have imagined that there would come a time when it would be possible to organize a workshop with these people in Kunitachi.

Let us return to Sano Shoin of September 1999. From the Russian Statistics Committee, in addition to Mr. Ponomarenko, the following members presented at the Workshop: the National Accounts Department Head and Mr. Ponomarenko's supervisor, Ms. Masakova (chief of input-output tables); Deputy Head Ms. Khenkina; Corporate Statistics/ Structural Survey Department Head Mr. Ulyanov; and Price/ Finance Statistics Department Head Ms. Goryacheva.

I can also recall distinctly when I met Mr. Ulyanov and Ms. Goryacheva for the first time in March 1996, when I visited the Russian Statistics Committee in Moscow with Prof. Kuboniwa. Prof. Kuboniwa received a pledge from then Vice-Chairman of the Statistics Committee Sokohlin (currently its Chairman) for full cooperation with the COE project. The next day, we were able to meet with four Department Head class officials in a row, one at a time. For me, it was the first time I met with so many officials in one day. Two of the four officials we met at the time were Mr. Ulyanov and Ms. Goryacheva. Mr. Ulyanov was the chief of the key section of Soviet/ Russian statistics, the industrial statistics section, and was a statistician through and through. He was very efficient and explained in detail actual operations through concrete examples. The last person we met on that day was Ms. Goryacheva. Although we were quite tired after three meetings in a row, I recall that she was direct in her replies, and that she was intent on discussing specialized and specific issues. I could not have imagined then that there would come a time when these two officials would be participating in a workshop at Kunitachi.

Here, I would like to state explicitly that I am a strong supporter of the COE project undertaking the estimations of Russian historical GDP statistics jointly with the Russian Statistics Office. There are several advantages for both sides. We can obtain the original data for the official statistics, and can gain a clear, concrete picture of present and past statistical methods through discussions with officials. For the Russian side, they can access the most recent SNA methods, and can participate in the calculations of the historical statistics of their own country.

In the post-Perestroika era, there was an explosion in the number of criticisms of the official Soviet and Russian statistics. Several alternative estimations of historical Soviet economic growth rates were constructed by Russian and foreign researchers. In most of these cases, the Russian Statistical Committee was the target of the criticisms. However, the joint research presented by Prof. Kuboniwa and Mr. Ponomarenko on Russian GDP estimations since the 1960s at this Workshop was the first alternative estimations conducted with the full participation of the Russian Statistical Committee. Further, Russian participants showed keen interest in the report presented by Prof. Suhara on growth rates for manufacturing based on physical output, just one indication of the extent to which Russian officials are interested in compiling more accurate historical statistics of their country.

This Workshop provided evidence that we were right to conduct joint research with the Russian official statistical agencies, and that this collaboration has been very productive. Moreover, I felt strongly that the co-operation with official Russian statistical agencies was evolving to a new stage. Five years have passed since the project began, and this Workshop may prove to be the finale for the Russia Group, but I look forward to further progress in the near future. To my mind, the Workshop marked a start as much as an end. In closing, I can only state that all Japanese participants and Russian participants were extremely satisfied with this Workshop, and express our deepest gratitude to Hitotsubashi and the COE project.[3]


ENDNOTES

[1] On the shift to the SNA in Russia, see Kuboniwa Masaaki, and Tabata Shinichiro eds., Russian Economy at the Crossroad: Transition to Market and SNA (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1999) (in Japanese).

[2] My main work based on these materials is "Changes in the Structure and Distribution of Russian GDP in the 1990s" Post-Soviet Geography and Economics, Vol. 37, No. 3 (1996), which is also included in COE Projec Reprinted Paper No. R96-9.

[3] Although I did not discuss this in the main text, at this Workshop, among the Japanese participants, Prof. Kuboniwa Masaaki, Prof. Suhara Manabu (Nihon University), Prof. Uegaki Akira (Seinan University), and I also gave presentations. Prof. Uegaki reported on balance of payments, and I on trade statistics, generating regressions from available present day statistics. An Introduction of this workshop was also given by the Russian Participants in the Russian journal Voprosy statistiki (1999, No. 11, pp.57-58).

(Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University)


Russian Economic Statistics in Historical Perspectives

September 14 (Tuesday) - 15 (Wednesday),1999

Program

September 14
1 Report Yury Ivanov (CIS Statistics Committee), "National Accounts in Russia and the former Soviet Union"
Discussant Shinichiro Tabata (Slavic Research Center, Hokkaido University)
2 Report Irina Goryacheva (Head of Department, Goskomstat), " Statistics on Prices and Finances in Russia"
Discussant Manabu Suhara (Nihon Univ. and Hitotsubashi Univ.)
3 Report Alexey Ponomarenko and Masaaki Kuboniwa (Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University), "Estimating Russia's GDP: 1960-1990"
Discussant Tachiana Khomenko (Deputy Head of Department, CIS Stat Com)
4 Report Rakhil Khenkina (Goskomstat), "National Income Statistics in the Soviet Union and Russia"
Discussant Alexey Ponomarenko (IER, Hitotsubashi University)
5 Report Irina Masakova (Head of Department, Goskomstat) ,"Russia's SNA"
Discussant Masaaki Kuboniwa

September15
6 Report Manabu Suhara (Nihon University), "Estimating Russia's Industrial Production: 1913-1990"
7 Report Igor Ulyanov (Head of Department, Goskomstat), "Industrial Production Statistics in Russia"
Discussant Yury Ivanov
8 Report Tachiana Khomenko (Deputy Head of Department, CIS Stat Com),"Estimation of Historical GDP in Russia and Central Asia"
Discussant Masaaki Kuboniwa
9 Report Akira Uegaki (Faculty of Economics, Seinan Gakuin University), "Russia's BOP Statistics"
10 Report Shinichiro Tabata, "Russia's Foreign Trade Statistics"
Discussant Tachiana Khomenko
11 Report Masaaki Kuboniwa, "Estimating GDP in Pre-revolution Russia"
Discussant Yury Ivanov