Ag Mag | the agriculture newsletter

NEW STANDARDS IN NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTS


On 8 December, the ABS released the 2008-09 issue of the annual Australian System of National Accounts (cat. no. 5204.0). This publication presented details of national accounts data including main aggregates and productivity measures; sectoral accounts for households, financial and non-financial corporations; estimates of product, operating surplus, tables of capital formation and capital stock; national balance sheets; and flow of funds tables.

But this release was rather special in that it presented statistics compiled in accordance with a number of revised international standards and related classifications.

These new standards relate to the system of national accounts (SNA08), balance of payments and international investment (BPM6), and industry classifications (ANZSIC06 and SESCA08). Detailed descriptions of the key changes and estimates of the impact on selected key aggregates were recently published in the Information Paper: Information paper: Implementation of new international statistical standards in ABS National and International Accounts (cat. no.5310.0.55.002).

In 5204.0, actual impacts of the adjustments to SNA08 and SESCA08 can be seen. For example,the changes have resulted in a move in the Industry Value Added (IVA) for 2007-08 for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry from $26,497m under ANZSIC93 to $26,667m under ANZSIC06 (0.6% change). As well, GDP in 2007-08 has moved from $1,132,172m (SNA93) to $1,181,750m (SNA08) causing Agriculture, Fishing and Forestry's contribution to GDP to move from 2.34% (SNA93) to 2.26% (SNA08).

For more details, please contact Malcolm Adamson on 02 6252 6750