International Trade in Services and Royalties Survey/Census (ITSS)
The purpose of the ITSS is to collect information on international trade in selected services and royalties. This information is used in compiling Balance of Payments (BoP) statistics, which are a record of New Zealand’s international economic transactions, and to inform New Zealand’s trade negotiations.
Content
The ITSS provides information on the value of imports and exports of commercial services, and payments made or received abroad for royalties.59 The ITSS tables included in the LBD are compiled from the quarterly ITSS, which captures the bulk of the value of international services trade, and an ad hoc census, run in 1999, 2005 and 2011, which informs the non-sampled estimate of commercial services and royalties trade for BoP statistics. Both sources provide information on partner country and service type, with the census including additional questions on mode of supply.60 As at 2015, the census component of the ITSS has been discontinued.
Coverage
As the focus of the ITSS collection is the production of aggregate values for National Accounts purposes, the sampling methodology is focused on high-value traders. The quarterly survey is designed to capture 95 percent of all commercial services and royalties transactions within the BoP framework. The remaining 5 percent is estimated based on the census. In the case of enterprise groups linked by parent-subsidiary relationships, the survey is intended to be completed by the New Zealand head office (the top link in the ownership chain located in New Zealand). However, in some cases business units within the group complete the survey separately. In either case, the response is linked to the enterprise which provided the data to Statistics NZ.
Links
ITSS questionnaire
