Foreign affiliate trade statistics (FATS), also known as transnational corporation (TNC) data details the economic operations of foreign direct investment-based enterprises.
Collection of such information, and aggregation at the national level, can provide economists and policymakers with insight as to the relationship that transnational corporations, being FDI-related enterprises, have on economies.
FATS indicators - including:
- sales,
- expenditures,
- profits,
- value-added (product),
- inter- and intra-firm trade,
- exports and imports (specific to FDI-owned firms)
- employment information.
Inward FATS - Data which represent the operations of foreign-owned (in the FDI sense, i.e. at a minimum of 10% of book value) firms in the local economy, or country.
Outward FATS - Data which represent the operations firms abroad, which are owned by a firm in our home-country ("owned" in the FDI sense, i.e. at a minimum of 10% of book value).
FATS are an economic indicator which has a direct linkage to WTO-GATS Mode 3 Legal Commitments; GATS Mode 3 is one of the Four Modes of Supply enshrined as the framework of the General Agreement on Trade in Services GATS of the World Trade Organization WTO.
FATS describe economic activities which take place as a result of WTO-GATS Mode 3 enterprise trade, or trade which takes place under Commercial Presence circumstances.
The standard for definition for Commercial Presence in the WTO-GATS differs from the generally-accepted definition of FDI, which under IMF Balance of Payments Volume 5 standards is 10%; WTO-GATS Commercial Presence defines ownership level benchmarks at 10% of enterprise book value.
Famous quotes containing the words foreign, affiliate, trade and/or statistics:
“Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“Reporters for tabloid newspapers beat a path to the park entrance each summer when the national convention of nudists is held, but the cult’s requirement that visitors disrobe is an obstacle to complete coverage of nudist news. Local residents interested in the nudist movement but as yet unwilling to affiliate make observations from rowboats in Great Egg Harbor River.”
—For the State of New Jersey, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I have no doubt that they lived pretty much the same sort of life in the Homeric age, for men have always thought more of eating than of fighting; then, as now, their minds ran chiefly on the “hot bread and sweet cakes;” and the fur and lumber trade is an old story to Asia and Europe.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)