Sri Lanka will be able to determine the extent of the economic impact gained from the island’s tourism sector referred to as the Tourism Satellite Account by the end of next year, following the completion of ongoing surveys, a senior government official said.
According to the Chief Executive Officer of the Sri Lanka Tourism Development Authority (SLTDA), Malraj Kiriella the surveys are presently being conducted independently by the SLTDA and the Department of Census and Statistics of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
“We have already inserted the relevant questions required to ascertain the tourism impact in the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) and the SLTDA’s survey through questionnaires being given for tourists at the Airport,” Kiriella told the Sunday Observer.
He noted that the information will help determine the tourism sector’s contribution to the national economy and help the country effectively plan its infrastructure such as water or transportation going forward.
The Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) is a standard statistical framework and the main tool for the economic measurement of tourism. TSA data provides a better understanding of the place of tourism in an economy and enables a range of economic analysis. For example, it becomes possible to apply economic modeling techniques (like Input-Output analysis) to TSA data in order to estimate the indirect and induced effects of tourism in an economy.
The Tourism Satellite Account: Recommended Methodological Framework 2008 provides the updated common conceptual framework for constructing a TSA. It adopts the basic system of concepts, classifications, definitions, tables and aggregates of the System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA 2008), the international standard for a systematic summary of national economic activity, from a functional perspective.
The TSA thus allows for the harmonization and reconciliation of tourism statistics from an economic (National Accounts) perspective. This enables the generation of tourism economic data (such as Tourism Direct GDP) that is comparable with other economic statistics.
The TSA can be seen as a set of 10 summary tables, each with their underlying data.