9th January 08

A Quarterly Expenditure Measure for GDP for Scotland

SESCG

Page 2

Best practice - IMF guidance

• Accurate and timely data, not indirect techniques

• Consistent with annual equivalents

• Revisions necessary and made in a transparent manner

• Presented as a consistent time series

• Sub components of GDP are also important series

• Unadjusted data are the first and primary requirement

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Requirements – Current Price GDP (E) series

Current price GDP (E) Requirement Availability

Ba se year GDP (E) Paasche price series Laspeyres quantity series ?

Page 4

Requirements – Constant Price GDP (E) series

Constant price GDP (E) Requirement Availability

Base year GDP (E) (e.g. 2003) 2007 volume inflators

Page 5

Key expenditure components for volume inflation

• Input-Output used to identify key components of demand

• Source search to identify available proxy indicators

• Increasing coverage of sources will increase accuracy

• Assessment of sources using ESA / SNA indicators• Relevance• Accuracy• Timeliness & punctuality• Comparability• (Excl. accessibility & clarity as ex post indicators)

Page 6

Summary of available sources

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Conclusions

• Best: volume indicators for key components of final demand

• Scotland has available data to deliver such a series

• Meeting IMF guidelines:• Constant price series• Base year and volume inflation• Individual series for demand components• Comparability for UK benchmarking

• Importance of base year weights from IO tables• Same source but different weights for GDP (E) and (O)

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Recommendations / next steps

• Scoping focus was to identify a positive way forward• No figures produced

• Recommend development of an in-house pilot series

• How best to deliver?

• Issue of imports and exports to be discussed: • Good export data, but weaker on imports

• Merit in individual series if not entire GDP (E) • E.g. improvement of investment data