Improvements to gross domestic product – Methods paper
3 December 2020
Improvements to gross domestic product provides technical users with information about upcoming changes to data and methods applied to the forthcoming release of Gross domestic product: September 2020 quarter (scheduled for 17 December 2020). In particular, this paper will provide an early indication of the impact of incorporating detailed data from the balanced annual national accounts on our volume estimates of annual economic growth.
In the September 2020 quarter release of gross domestic product, Stats NZ will incorporate a range of updates to our statistics on quarterly and annual economic growth. The updates will be the result of:
- incorporating the latest balanced data from National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2019
- incorporating updated benchmarks for GDP(E) from National accounts (income and expenditure): Year ended March 2020
- updating other data sources that are available on an infrequent basis, such as from the 2018 Census
- Implementing improvements to quarterly methodologies and bringing in new data sources, which include: improving our inventories stock adjustments, updating some of our quarterly methods to use the business data collection, and seasonally adjusting the financial and insurance services component of GDP(P). These improvements were summarised in 2020 national accounts improvements preview.
These updates reflect a regular programme of maintaining and enhancing our measurement of quarterly and annual economic growth. Such updates are implemented into Gross domestic product each September quarter.
Please note that changes to seasonal adjustment methods in Gross domestic product mentioned in 2020 national accounts improvements preview have been deferred to a later date. This is to allow time to provide some further information about the proposed changes. Further information about this will be provided in the paper.
Visit our website to read this methods paper:
MIL OSI –
