DECEMBER KEY FIGURES

			Sep Qtr 16 to Dec Qtr 16	Dec Qtr 15 to Dec Qtr 16
			%	%
Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)
	Manufacturing
		Trend	-0.7	-3.2
		Seasonally Adjusted	0.1	-2.4
	Wholesale trade
		Trend	2.1	7.9
		Seasonally Adjusted	3.1	9.0
Inventories (Chain volume measures)
	Trend		0.7	1.8
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.3	1.6
Company gross operating profits
	Trend		9.3	20.0
	Seasonally Adjusted		20.1	26.2
Wages and salaries
	Seasonally Adjusted		-0.5	1.0

Inventories (volume terms), Trend estimates

Company gross operating profits, Trend estimates

DECEMBER KEY POINTS


CHAIN VOLUME ESTIMATES

• The trend estimate for inventories rose 0.7% in the December quarter 2016. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 0.3% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Manufacturing sales of goods and services fell 0.7% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 0.1% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Wholesale trade sales of goods and services rose 2.1% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 3.1%.

CURRENT PRICE ESTIMATES

• The seasonally adjusted estimate for company gross operating profits rose 20.1% in the December quarter 2016.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate for wages and salaries fell 0.5% in the December quarter 2016.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
March 2017	5 June 2017
June 2017	4 September 2017
September 2017	4 December 2017
December 2017	5 March 2018

COMPARISON BETWEEN COMPANY GROSS OPERATING PROFITS AND GROSS OPERATING SURPLUS

Valuation changes have had an impact on the value of inventories held by Australian businesses this quarter. An inventories valuation adjustment (IVA) is applied in the calculation of the gross operating surplus of private non-financial corporations (GOS) estimate in the Australian National Accounts. The IVA for the December quarter 2016 is $3,318m which is $2,131m higher than the September quarter 2016 IVA of $1,187m.

No adjustment is made to the company gross operating profits (CGOP) estimate in this publication and, as a result, users should exercise caution when comparing CGOP and GOS. It should be noted that there are other differences between the two series. In particular, changes are made to GOS when annual benchmarks are applied and slightly different seasonal factors apply to the two series. Given this, while CGOP movements are an appropriate indicator for GOS, the two series will not have equivalent seasonally adjusted movements from quarter to quarter.


CHANGES IN NEXT ISSUE

For the March quarter 2017 release, an improvement will be applied to the seasonal adjustment method of current price data within the Mining aggregate estimates. Seasonal factors derived from the corresponding chain volume measures will be used to seasonally adjust the current price values for selected components. This change will be consistent with improvements to the March quarter 2017 release of the Australian National Accounts: National Income, Expenditure and Product (cat. no. 5206.0) and the Balance of Payments and International Investment Position, Australia (cat. no. 5302.0).


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