The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) is an annual process which the European Commission undertakes, using a scoreboard of 14 headline indicators and 28 auxiliary indicators to screen for any macroeconomic imbalances that may occur in member states. Each of the 14 headline indicators have a threshold, set by the European Commission, beyond which economic imbalances are determined to have occurred.
All EU member states have obligations to ensure that their economies do not exceed the various thresholds on the headline indicators. This publication is designed to help users to verify the European Commission's data on Ireland and provides additional analysis of all headline indicators and many auxiliary indicators. The cut off for inclusion of 2017 data for each country was 24th October 2018. Some data may have been updated/revised since this date as part of the regular production cycle of each domain. The information shown in the MIP scoreboard is based on the data available for the Alert Mechanism Report 2019, published in November 2018.
| Table 2.1 Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure Scoreboard for Ireland, 2012-20171 | ||||||||
| Ireland | Thresholds | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | |
| External Imbalances and Competitiveness | ||||||||
| 1 | Current Account Balance as % of GDP (3 yr average) | -4%/6% | -2.3 | -1.2 | 0.0 | 2.3 | 0.4 | 2.9 |
| 2 | Net International Investment Position as % of GDP | -35% | -137.7 | -133.3 | -164.3 | -198.7 | -170.7 | -149.3 |
| 3 | Real Effective Exchange Rate (42 IC - HICP deflator) (3 yr % change) | ±5% | -12.2 | -3.8 | -3.6 | -6.4 | -7.0 | -6.2 |
| 4 | Export Market Share (5 yr % change) | -6% | -16.3 | -10.6 | -14.6 | 37.8 | 58.7 | 64.4 |
| 5 | Nominal ULC (3 yr % change) | 9% | -12.7 | -3.8 | -3.7 | -18.6 | -18.8 | -17.2 |
| Internal Imbalances | ||||||||
| 6 | Deflated House Prices, % year-on-year change | 6% | -14.8 | -0.5 | 15.1 | 11.0 | 6.6 | 9.5 |
| 7 | Private Sector Credit Flow as % of GDP, consolidated | 14% | -0.6 | -1.4 | 2.5 | -2.3 | -15.6 | -7.5 |
| 8 | Private Sector Debt as % of GDP, consolidated | 133% | 279.6 | 267.7 | 278.3 | 306.0 | 283.3 | 243.6 |
| 9 | General Government Sector Debt as % of GDP | 60% | 119.9 | 119.7 | 104.1 | 76.8 | 73.4 | 68.4 |
| 10 | Unemployment Rate (3 yr average)2 | 10% | 15.2 | 14.9 | 13.7 | 11.9 | 10.1 | 8.4 |
| 11 | Total Financial Sector Liabilities, % year-on-year change | 16.5% | -1.8 | 1.9 | 19.5 | 9.6 | 1.5 | 4.3 |
| Employment Indicators | ||||||||
| 12 | Activity Rate, % of total population aged 15-64 (3 yr % change) | -0.2% | -1.9 | 0.2 | 0.6 | 1.0 | 0.9 | 0.9 |
| 13 | Long-term Unemployment Rate, % of active population aged 15-74 (3 yr % change) | 0.5% | 5.7 | 1.1 | -2.2 | -3.9 | -3.8 | -3.6 |
| 14 | Youth Unemployment Rate, % of active population aged 15-24 (3 yr % change) | 2.0% | 6.3 | -1.4 | -6.2 | -10.6 | -9.9 | -9.0 |
| 1Years where the threshold has been breached are highlighted in blue. | ||||||||
| 2This indicator did not breach the threshold for 2016 in last year's MIP Scoreboard. However, it has done so under this year's data revisions. | ||||||||
Table 2.1 (above) provides the MIP Scoreboard for Ireland for the years 2012-2017. Where indicative thresholds are exceeded, cells in Table 2.1 are highlighted in blue.
In 2017, five out of the 14 MIP indicators for Ireland exceeded their indicative threshold. These indicators were:
- Net International Investment Position
- Deflated House Price Index
- Real Effective Exchange Rate
- Private Sector Debt
- General Government Sector Debt
Next Chapter: Headline Indicators >>
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