MARCH KEY FIGURES

			Dec Qtr 16 to Mar Qtr 17	Mar Qtr 16 to Mar Qtr 17
			%	%
Sales of goods and services (Chain volume measures)
	Manufacturing
		Trend	-1.0	-3.7
		Seasonally Adjusted	-1.4	-3.5
	Wholesale trade
		Trend	1.9	8.6
		Seasonally Adjusted	1.5	8.8
Inventories (Chain volume measures)
	Trend		0.6	2.1
	Seasonally Adjusted		1.2	2.5
Company gross operating profits
	Trend		9.4	36.1
	Seasonally Adjusted		6.0	39.7
Wages and salaries
	Seasonally Adjusted		0.3	0.9

Inventories (volume terms), Trend estimates

Company gross operating profits, Trend estimates

MARCH KEY POINTS


CHAIN VOLUME ESTIMATES

• The trend estimate for inventories rose 0.6% in the March quarter 2017. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 1.2% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Manufacturing sales of goods and services fell 1.0% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate fell 1.4% this quarter.
• The trend estimate for Wholesale trade sales of goods and services rose 1.9% this quarter. The seasonally adjusted estimate rose 1.5%.

CURRENT PRICE ESTIMATES

• The seasonally adjusted estimate for company gross operating profits rose 6.0% in the March quarter 2017.
• The seasonally adjusted estimate for wages and salaries rose 0.3% in the March quarter 2017.

NOTES

FORTHCOMING ISSUES

ISSUE (QUARTER)	Release Date
June 2017	4 September 2017
September 2017	4 December 2017
December 2017	5 March 2018
March 2018	4 June 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 March quarter 2017 is $1,516m which is $1,746m lower than the December quarter 2016 IVA of $3,262m. 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 THIS ISSUE

For the March quarter 2017 release, an improvement was applied to the seasonal adjustment method of current price data within the Mining aggregate estimates. Seasonal factors derived from the corresponding chain volume measures were used to seasonally adjust the current price values for selected components. This change is 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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