MARCH KEY FIGURES

			Dec Qtr 09 to Mar Qtr 10	Mar Qtr 09 to Mar Qtr 10
			%	%
Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)
	Manufacturing
		Trend	2.2	3.5
		Seasonally Adjusted	1.3	3.2
	Wholesale trade
		Trend	1.5	5.6
		Seasonally Adjusted	-0.6	3.7
Inventories (Chain volume measures)
	Trend		0.5	-1.1
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.5	-1.2
Company gross operating profits
	Trend		2.9	-2.4
	Seasonally Adjusted		3.9	-1.3
Wages and salaries
	Seasonally Adjusted		1.7	0.4

Inventories (volume terms), Trend estimates

Company gross operating profits, Trend estimates

MARCH KEY POINTS


CHAIN VOLUME ESTIMATES

• The trend estimate for inventories rose 0.5% in the March quarter 2010. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 0.5% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Manufacturing sales of goods and services rose 2.2% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 1.3%.
• The trend estimate for Wholesale trade sales of goods and services rose 1.5% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate fell 0.6%.

CURRENT PRICE ESTIMATES

• The seasonally adjusted estimate for company gross operating profits rose 3.9% in the March quarter 2010.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate for wages and salaries rose 1.7% in the March quarter 2010.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
June 2010	30 August 2010
September 2010	29 November 2010
December 2010	28 February 2011
March 2011	30 May 2011

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 March quarter 2010 is ($1496)m which is $3276m higher than the December quarter 2009 IVA of (-$1780)m.

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.


REVISIONS IN THIS ISSUE

Chain volume measures of Mining sales of goods and services have been revised from the September quarter 2008. This is due to the updating of prices in the weighting structure used to aggregate components. The prices have been updated to 2007-08 prices.


INQUIRIES

For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070 or Didier Rivet on Sydney (02) 9268 4900.