Many enterprises operating within an economy are linked with other enterprises by complete or partial common ownership and a shared management structure to form an enterprise group. Enterprises also often share common ownership and management with foreign affiliates. It is common for enterprises within an enterprise group to trade with each other, sometimes exclusively, as when they perform an intermediate stage in a vertically integrated production process, and share the outputs and costs of ancillary production. They may also share the outputs and costs of research and development activities. Given their close ties it may be sometimes desirable to consider an enterprise group as a single entity and to consolidate the accounts of its members. (This is already the practice in some other statistics such as AMNE, FATS and Bank for International Settlements (BIS) consolidated presentations.) Members of an enterprise group are usually engaged in different activities and sometimes in more than one sector, and so consolidation could affect aggregates, such as industry value added, and sectoral balance sheets. It is therefore probable that the most likely way forward would be by way of supplementary tables.
Separate consideration needs to be given to the case where some parts of the group are non-resident. |
