Manufacturers Stocks (Survey of)

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    NAME OF ORGANISATION
    Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

    OVERVIEW
    Quantity data of production and/or opening and closing inventories (called "stocks" up to the 1998-99 collection) of selected commodities are collected annually from manufacturing establishments with four or more employees. These data are collected, edited and aggregated (at the commodity level) by the Manufacturing Industry National Project Centre, before being passed to Agriculture Section in Central Office for inclusion in the annual publication Apparent Consumption of Foodstuffs and Nutrients, Australia. With effect from 1997-98 reference year, production data from this collection have also been published in their own right in the September quarter issue of Manufacturing Production, Australia (ABS Cat No. 8301.0). For those commodities for which production data are collected sub-annually, only inventories data are sought in this collection.

    PURPOSE
    For use in calculating apparent consumption of foodstuffs and nutrients in Australia, and as indicators of output and industry performance.

    SCOPE
    Management units (MUs)/Establishments classified to Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification (ANZSIC) Division C (ie Manufacturing) and employing four or more persons.

    DATA DETAIL

    Conceptual framework
    Operates within standard ABS Integrated Economic Statistics framework

    Main outputs
    For each commodity of interest, aggregates of production during financial year and/or inventories (previously called "stocks") held at 30 June by manufacturing establishments. Data (for previous years) contributed to compilation of the publications Apparent Consumption of Foodstuffs, Australia (ABS Cat No. 4306.0) and Apparent Consumption of Selected Foodstuffs, Australia, Preliminary (ABS Cat No. 4315.0). Production data for each commodity were also published in the September quarter edition of Manufacturing Production, Australia (ABS Cat No. 8301.0), commencing with the 1997-98 issue.

    Classifications
    ANZSIC (determines scope); ANZSCC (Australian & New Zealand Standard Commodity Classification) - classifies items collected.

    Other concepts (summary)
    Not Applicable

    GEOGRAPHIC DETAIL
    Australia

    Comments and/or Other Regions
    Data are only available for Australia as a whole.

    COLLECTION FREQUENCY
    Annually

    Frequency comments
    Has been annual to date but no cycle for 2000-01, frequency being changed to every 5 years (next cycle 2005-06).

    COLLECTION HISTORY
    Continuous - in cycles prior to 1995-96, production data had been collected sub-annually for a number of the commodity items of interest. As part of changes introduced in 1994 towards increased user funding, these items ceased to be collected sub-annually. Hence it was necessary to redesign the Manufacturers' Stocks and Production forms to ask for production as well as stocks (now called "inventories") data.

    Because of withdrawal of user funding arising from further review of the Manufacturing Production collection in 1996, some relevant production data ceased to be collected sub-annually from July 1997. At the same time, the frequency of Manufacturing Production, Australia (ABS Cat No. 8301.0) changed from monthly to quarterly and its content was substantially reduced. To partly compensate for this, it was decided to institute publication of (annual) production data from the Manufacturers' Stocks collection in the September issue of Manufacturing Production, Australia (ABS Cat. No. 8301.0) with effect from the 1997-98 reference year.

    As a result of these changes

    • production data were collected for some items for which only inventories data had been sought in earlier cycles of this collection;
    • new items were introduced, some deleted and some definitions changed; and.
    • more intensive editing was enacted and the processing timetable was tightened, to allow earlier release.

    Census was annual up to 1999-00 cycle but it will be a 5 year cycle from then, starting with the 2005-06 cycle.

    DATA AVAILABILITY
    Yes

    Data availability comments
    Data are collected principally for contribution to other series. However, production data were published in the September quarter issue of Manufacturing Production, Australia (ABS Cat No. 8301.0), starting from the 1997-98 reference year (the latest data published are in Manufacturing Production, Australia, September Quarter 2000 (ABS Cat No. 8301.0)).


    DATE OF LAST UPDATE FOR THIS DOCUMENT
    31/08/2004 12:19 PM