A wide range of economic data is available to analyse the performance of various components of the Australian economy over time. For example, data are regularly published on the number of houses being built, the number of cars produced, whether employment is rising or falling, the composition of exports and imports and so on. While these and other statistical series are important in their own right, none of them in isolation can provide an overall picture of the state of the economy.
National accounts are designed to provide a systematic summary of national economic activity, and have been developed to assist in the practical application of economic theory. The system of national accounts includes national income, expenditure and product accounts, financial accounts, the national balance sheet and input-output tables. At their summary level, the national income, expenditure and product accounts reflect key economic flows: production, the distribution of incomes, consumption, saving and investment. At their more detailed level, they are designed to present a statistical picture of the structure of the economy and the detailed processes that make up domestic production and its distribution. The financial accounts show the financial assets and liabilities of the nation and of each institutional sector, the market for financial instruments and inter-sectoral financial transactions. The balance sheet is a comprehensive statement of produced and non-produced assets, liabilities to the rest of the world and net worth. Input-output tables show which goods and services are produced by each industry and how they are used.
The national accounts include many detailed classifications (e.g. by industry, by purpose, by commodity, by State and Territory, and by asset type) relating to major economic aggregates.
The main output from the national accounts is a measure of the overall value of economic production in Australia in a given period, but without any double counting of the goods and services being produced. Many goods and services are bought by businesses for use in their own productive activities (e.g. steel is bought by car manufacturers). If the value of all goods and services produced were simply added together there would be serious duplication because some goods and services would be added in several times at various stages of production. The overall measure of production, excluding double counting, is called 'gross domestic product', which is commonly referred to as GDP. It is formally defined as:
"the total market value of goods and services produced in Australia after deducting the cost of goods and services used up (intermediate consumption) in the process of production, but before deducting allowances for the consumption of fixed capital (depreciation)".
The performance of the economy is represented in the national accounts by such measures as growth in GDP. While movements in the chain volume measure of GDP (from which the direct effects of price changes have been removed) are an important indicator of economic growth, there is no single measure which can describe all aspects of the wellbeing of a country's citizens.
There are significant aspects of the quality of life which cannot be comprehended in a system of economic accounts, just as there are significant aspects of an individual's wellbeing which are not measured in the conventional concept (or any other concept) of that individual's income.
Notwithstanding their limitations, especially in relation to uses for which they were never designed, the national accounts provide vital information for a range of important purposes. The system of national accounts also provides a framework or structure which can be, and has been, adapted and extended to facilitate the examination of other economic and social policy issues.
A detailed presentation of the concepts underlying the national accounts is provided in the ABS publication Australian National Accounts: Concepts, Sources and Methods (5216.0). An updated version, reflecting the latest international standards, was released in 2000 as part of the Statistical Concepts Library on the ABS Internet site at https://www.abs.gov.au.
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