Republic of Lithuania: Staff Report for the 2019 Article IV Consultation—Informational Annex
Author:
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
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Publication Date:
31 Jul 2019
eISBN:
9781513509235
Language:
English
Keywords:
ISCR; CR; potential GDP; debt; center; foreign currency; financial asset; BoL website; External sector statistics; Consumer price indexes; Monetary statistics
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2019 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report

Abstract

2019 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report

Fund Relations

(As of May 31, 2019)

Membership Status: Joined: April 29, 1992; Article VIII

General Resources Account:

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SDR Department:

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Outstanding Purchases and Loans: None

Latest Financial Arrangements:

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Projected Payments to Fund:

(SDR Million; based on existing use of resources and present holdings of SDRs):

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Implementation of HIPC Initiative: Not applicable.

Implementation of MDRI Assistance: Not applicable.

Implementation of Catastrophe Containment and Relief (CCR): Not applicable.

Exchange Rate Arrangement:

As of January 1, 2015, the currency of Lithuania is the euro, which floats freely and independently against other currencies. Prior to 2015, the currency of Lithuania was the litas. From April 1, 1994 to February 1, 2002, the litas was pegged to the U.S. dollar at LTL 4 per U.S. dollar under a currency board arrangement. From February 2, 2002 to Dec 31, 2014, the litas was pegged to the euro at LTL 3.4528 per euro. Lithuania joined the European Union (EU) on May 1, 2004, and ERM II on June 28, 2004. Lithuania has accepted the obligations of Article VIII of the Fund’s Articles of Agreement and maintains an exchange system free of restrictions on the making of payments and transfers for current international transactions except for those maintained solely for the preservation of national or international security and which have been notified to the Fund pursuant to Executive Board Decision No. 144-(52/51).

Previous Article IV Consultation:

Lithuania is on the 12-month consultation cycle. The last Article IV consultation was concluded on May 21, 2018. The staff report and other related documents are available at https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2018/06/25/Republic-of-Lithuania-2018-Article-IV-Consultation-Press-Release-Staff-Report-and-Statement-46017.

Safeguards Assessment:

Under the Fund’s safeguards assessment policy, the Bank of Lithuania (BoL) was subject to and completed a safeguards assessment with respect to the Stand-By Arrangement, (the SBA was approved on August 30, 2001 and expired on March 29, 2003) on December 10, 2001. The assessment identified certain weaknesses and proposed appropriate recommendations as reported in EBS/01/211. The BoL has implemented these recommendations.

FSAP Participation and ROSCs:

An FSAP Update mission was completed on November 19, 2007. Fiscal and statistics ROSCs were completed in November 2002 and December 2002, respectively.

Republic of Lithuania: Technical Assistance from the Fund, 1999–2018

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Resident Representative:

None

Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Combating Financing of Terrorism (CFT): Lithuania’s compliance with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standard, was assessed by MONEYVAL, the FATF-style regional body of which it is a member, in April 2012 and December 2018. The former assessment report was published in December 2012. Lithuania was rated partially compliant on nineteen FATF Recommendations, leading to the application of the first stage of the Compliance Enhancing Procedure (CEP). In response, the authorities amended the Criminal Code and the AML/CFT Law and put in place secondary legislation and guidelines. This extended the list of punishable activities, criminalized financing of terrorism, reorganized the suspicious transactions reporting system, strengthened customer due diligence, and extended record keeping requirements. Lithuania has submitted to date three compliance reports under the CEP procedure. In recognition of the progress achieved in the key areas of concern, MONEYVAL ended the CEP at step 1 in April 2015, but recommended that the authorities address the remaining deficiencies and ensure effective implementation of its AML/CFT framework in order to exit the regular follow-up procedures. At the 50th Plenary meeting in April 2016, the MONEYVAL Secretariat acknowledged progress made by Lithuania but noted that further progress is needed with respect to R.5, R.13/SR.IV and SR.III. While Lithuania has made progress on criminalizing ML/FT, it remained subject to regular follow-up. At the MONEYVAL Plenary in September 2017, the Plenary agreed that Lithuania has taken sufficient steps to remedy deficiencies on key and core FATF recommendations which resulted in Lithuania being removed from the regular follow-up process. At the MONEYVAL Plenary in December 2018, Lithuania’s 5th round mutual evaluation was adopted, with all moderate effectiveness ratings except one (substantial) and a set of recommendations to be addressed by the 2020 plenary session, including an update of the National Risk Assessment

Lithuania has transposed the 4th Anti Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Directive. The new AML/CFT law came into force on July 13, 2017. Following changes in primary legislation, a number of secondary legal acts governing AML/CFT prevention were amended during 2017. The new legislation improves the identification process of beneficial owners, broadens the definition of politically exposed persons, and strengthens the sanctions regime, among other improvements. In particular, the new legislation extends the scope of anti-money laundering legislation to providers of all gambling and lottery services, and to agents involved in the purchase or sale of real estate properties and crowdfunding platforms. The EU Member States are obliged to create central registers containing information on the beneficial ownership of corporate and other legal entities, including trust structures. This is currently in the process in Lithuania.

Lithuania is expected to transpose the 5th AMLD by January 2020. The new legislation, among other things, makes public the registers of beneficial owners of companies (and under some conditions trusts) operating within the EU and improves interconnectedness of member countries’ national registers. Virtual currencies and custodian wallet providers are included into the scope of Directive.

Statistical Issues

General: Over the past several years, Lithuania has made good progress in establishing a macroeconomic database Data provision to the Fund for surveillance purposes is adequate for surveillance purposes.

In July 2018, Lithuania completed the requirements for adherence to the SDDS Plus, the highest tier of the Data Standards Initiatives.

National Accounts: The national accounts are compiled by Statistics Lithuania (SL) in accordance with the guidelines of the European System of Accounts 2010 (ESA 2010) from 2005 data onwards (data before 2005 still follow the European System of Accounts 1995, ESA 95). Quarterly GDP estimates at current and at constant prices are compiled using the production, expenditure and income approaches. GDP estimates by production are considered to be more reliable than the corresponding estimates by expenditure and income, but no statistical discrepancies between these three estimates are shown separately in the published figures as the discrepancies are included in the estimates of changes in inventories (expenditure approach) and operating surplus and mixed income (income approach). The annual and the quarterly national accounts are compiled at previous year prices and chain-linked to 2010. In general, good data sources and sound methods are used for the compilation of the national accounts, but measuring activity during the volatile environment of the 2008/09 crisis proved challenging. Moreover, difficulties remain in measuring the non-observed economy. Estimates compiled at detailed levels of economic activity using fixed coefficients derived from benchmark surveys conducted in 1996 and 2003, and updated in 2006 and in 2011, measured the non-observed economy at 28.5 percent of GDP in 2012. According to the most recent estimate, this figure was 14.0 percent of GDP in 2016.

Price Statistics: The main statistical data source for the production of the CPI is a monthly statistical survey on prices for consumer goods and services. Information published in the legal acts of state institutions, catalogues, pricelists, and on enterprises’ websites is also used. The price survey covers the entire territory of the country, and data is collected in small, medium, and large towns. The CPI covers consumption expenditure of the residents of the country and is the main instrument of indexation. The authorities also produce the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) which is used to measure inflation in the EU and is fully comparable across countries. In addition to the consumption expenditure of residents, the HICP covers also consumption expenditure of non-residents and foreign visitors but excludes financial intermediation services and games of chance. Differences in coverage and hence weighting account for most of the differences in the value of the CPI and HICP. Since December 1998, CPI weights have been updated annually. The index reference period for both the CPI and the HICP is is 2015. The monthly CPI and HICP are available in the second week following the reference month. The consumer price index is calculated according to the chain-linked Laspeyres formula with weights updated every year.

Government Finance Statistics: Data on the central government budget execution are available at a monthly and quarterly frequency. A new methodology, incorporating the GFSM 2014, was adopted in October 2014. Annual and quarterly historical data have been converted into the GFSM 2014 format. Administrative data sources include the Ministry of Finance, State Social Insurance Fund Board (Sodra), Compulsory Health Insurance Fund, Employment Fund, and financial statements of enterprises. The MoF is reporting to STA general government’s annual data on an accrual basis for publication in the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook (GFSY). In addition, the MoF is reporting quarterly and monthly data for publication in the IFS. Lithuania participates in the Eurostat GFS convergence project with the IMF since 2012.

Monetary Statistics: Lithuania uses the ECB reporting framework for monetary statistics and data are reported to the IMF through a gateway arrangement with the ECB that provides for efficient transmission of monetary statistics to the IMF and for publication in the IFS. IFS coverage includes the central bank and other depository corporations (ODCs) using Euro Area wide and national residency criteria. Data are published in IFS with a lag of about a month. Lithuania reports some data and indicators of the Financial Access Survey (FAS), including the two indicators adopted by the UN to monitor Target 8.10 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is room for improvement in reporting to the FAS, especially for series on use of financial services (depositors, deposit accounts, borrowers, and loan accounts).

Financial sector surveillance: Lithuania reports all 12 core and 8 of the 13 encouraged financial soundness indicators (FSIs) for deposit takers, three FSIs for nonfinancial corporations, one FSI for households, and all four FSIs for real estate markets on a quarterly basis.

Balance of Payments: The BoL is responsible for compiling balance of payments, international investment position (IIP), external debt and international reserves statistics. The BoL reports quarterly data on balance of payments, IIP and monthly international reserves to STA on a timely and regular basis. Balance of payments data (on a monthly and quarterly basis) are compiled using the format recommended in the Balance of Payments Manual, sixth edition (BPM6) from 2004 data onwards (data before 2004 still follow the BPM5 methodology). The monthly data correspond to several key balance of payments components, compiled on the basis of a sample survey covering the public sector, commercial banks, and some nonfinancial private sector institutions. Lithuania reports comprehensive data to two STA initiatives: (i) the Coordinated Direct Investment Survey (CDIS); and (ii) the Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey (CPIS). The Data Template on International Reserves and Foreign Currency Liquidity is disseminated monthly according to the operational guidelines and is hyperlinked to the Fund’s DSBB. Since late 2004, the BoL disseminates quarterly external debt data in the World Bank’s Quarterly External Debt Statistics (QEDS) database.

Data Standards and Quality: Lithuania subscribed to the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) in May 1996, and its metadata have been posted on the Fund’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) since April 1997. Lithuania meets the SDDS specifications for coverage, periodicity and timeliness of the data, and for the dissemination of the advance release calendars. A significant amount of economic and financial information is now available on various websites through the Internet (see section on

Dissemination of Statistics, below). The authorities publish a range of economic statistics through a number of publications, including the SL’s monthly publication, Economic and Social Developments, and the BoL’s monthly Bulletin. Lithuania adhered to the SDDS Plus in July 2018. The new data sets disseminated under the SDDS Plus cover data related to the performance of Lithuania’s financial sector, cross-border financial linkages, and vulnerabilities of the economy to shocks. A significant amount of data is available on the Internet:

  • metadata for data categories defined by the Special Data Dissemination Standard are posted on the IMF’s DSBB (http://dsbb.imf.org);

  • the BoL website (http://www.lb.lt/statistical_data_tree) provides data on monetary statistics, treasury bill auction results, balance of payments, IIP, external debt and other main economic indicators;

  • the SL website (http://osp.stat.gov.lt) provides monthly and quarterly information on economic and social development indicators;

  • the MoF (http://www.finmin.lrv.lt) home page includes data on the national budget, as well as information on laws and privatization; and government finance statistics (deficit, debt);

  • NASDAQ OMX Baltic website (http://www.nasdaqomxbaltic.com/market/?lang=en) includes information on stock trading at NASDAQ OMX Baltic stock Exchange in Vilnius (the former Vilnius Stock Exchange).

Republic of Lithuania: Table of Common Indicators Required for Surveillance As of June 30, 2019

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Any reserve assets that are pledged of otherwise encumbered should be specified separately. Also, data should comprise short-term liabilities linked to a foreign currency but settled by other means as well as the notional values of financial derivatives to pay and to receive foreign currency, including those linked to a foreign currency but settled by other means

Both market-based and officially-determined, including deposit and lending rates, discount rates, money market rates, rates on treasury bills, notes and bonds.

Foreign, domestic bank, and domestic nonbank financing.

The general government consists of the central government (budgetary funds, extra budgetary funds, and social security funds) and local governments.

Including currency and maturity composition.

Includes external gross financial asset and liability position vis-à-vis nonresidents.

Daily (D), Weekly (W), Monthly (M), Quarterly (Q), Annually (A); Not Available (NA).

Reflects the assessment provided in the data ROSC published in July 2004, the findings of the mission that took place during September 2003 for the dataset corresponding to the variable in each row. The assessment indicates whether international standards concerning concepts and definitions, scope, classification/sectorization, and basis for recording are fully observed (O), largely observed (LO), largely not observed (LNO), or not observed (NO).

Same as footnote 8, except referring to international standards concerning source data, statistical techniques, assessment and validation of source data, assessment and validation of intermediate data and statistical outputs, and revision studies.

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Cover IMF Staff Country Reports
Republic of Lithuania: 2019 Article IV Consultation-Press Release; Staff Report
Author:
International Monetary Fund. European Dept.
Volume/Issue:
Volume 2019: Issue 252
Publisher:
International Monetary Fund
ISBN:
9781513509235
ISSN:
1934-7685
Pages:
60
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5089/9781513509235.002