In Lithuania, two separate loan registers are progressively used for statistical purposes: the Foreign Loans Register (FLR), which records both granted and received loans of all residents, except households, vis-a-vis all non-residents and the Central Credit Register (CCR), which records loans extended by credit institutions and their subsidiaries. Both registers were started by the central bank in the nineties. The paper describes the gradual employment of these administrative databases for statistics.

Whereas the primary statistical application of the FLR is in external statistics, the CCR is used in financial stability statistics. Managing the FLR is a relatively unconventional statistical practice, compared to CCRs. The wide statistical use of the FLR became possible after the reporting forms were aligned with statistical needs in 2008. The FLR is used to update annually the enterprise population in the statistical register for external statistics quarterly surveys, compile external debt statistics (by remaining maturity, debt by currency breakdown, debt service schedule) and generate breakdowns both for quarterly and for monthly BoP and IIP. Geographical and maturity breakdown for local governments' borrowing is compiled on a monthly basis from the FLR. Moreover, the FLR is used in validating the external statistics survey information.

The distinct feature of the Lithuanian CCR since its establishment is its online character: information on loans and borrowers is updated continuously. The CCR includes a lot of attributes on both borrowers and their loans together with the information on all transactions, which makes it relatively rich, compared to CCRs in other countries. Statistics based on the CCR data is increasingly used for financial stability analysis, including breakdowns of loans by NACE or ad hoc exercises.

Keywords: Financial statistics; Credit register; Micro database

Biography: Dr Rimantas Juozas Vaicenavicius has been the Director of Statistics Department in the Bank of Lithuania since 2005, which is responsible for the compilation of monetary, financial, external and financial accounts statistics. Vaicenavicius' areas of interest cover national accounts, financial, trade, fiscal statistics and education of statistics. He is a member of (i) the Statistics Committee of the ESCB and (ii) the CMFB. From 2010 he has been an elected member of the Executive of the Irving Fisher Committee.