Abstract

One of the most crucial economic variables used by economic planners is that component of gross domestic product known as investment or capital formation. Capital formation consists of the values of durable equipment acquired, construction put in place and changes in inventory during a specific accounting period. The estimation of capital formation in durable equipment, in particular, has presented formidable difficulties to national account statisticians. Present available statistics gave only import values of these equipment such that these exists a wide gap between import and acquisition values since the latter included customs duties, import taxes, brokerage and other fees. To get data for the computation of benchmark parameters of imports of durable equipment, a survey of importers of durable equipment was undertaken in early 1990 with 1988 as reference period. Among the ratios on the various categories of imported equipment estimated by the study were: (1) proportions imported by direct users and by traders, (2) proportion allocated for capital use, (3) tax mark-up ratios to be applied to CIF values of imported durables allocated for capital use, (4) trade mark-up to be applied to CIF values of durables imported by traders, and (5) installation and transport cost ratios to be applied to CIF values.