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Business Indicators

Objectives
The Business Indicators Program is responsible for the provision of a range of sub-annual main economic indicators.

The indicators include:

• monthly statistics of turnover by selected retail industries and the takeaway food services industry
• quarterly statistics of company profits, inventories, sales and labour costs
• quarterly statistics of actual and expected new capital expenditure
• quarterly statistics of actual and expected mineral and petroleum exploration
• biannual statistics of expected mineral and petroleum expenditure.

These data are essential inputs to the compilation of quarterly and annual National Accounts.

The main clients of the program include the Treasury, the Reserve Bank of Australia, various State and Territory departments, banks, industry associations, and other financial analysts and commentators. These clients use the statistics as partial indicators of the National Accounts and as important indicators of economic activity in their own right.

Outputs
The key statistical outputs of the program are the monthly publication Retail Trade, Australia (ABS cat. no. 8501.0) and the quarterly publications Private New Capital Expenditure and Expected Expenditure, Australia (ABS cat. no. 5625.0), Mineral and Petroleum Exploration, Australia (ABS cat. no. 8412.0) and Business Indicators, Australia (ABS cat. no. 5676.0). Each publication contains both national and state level data and estimates in original, seasonally adjusted and trend terms. The latter publication provides information on sales, labour costs, company profits and inventories; publications with cat. nos: 8501.0; 5625.0; and 5676.0; also present current price data by industry and, where appropriate, estimates are presented as chain volume measures.

The program produces detailed datasets that are available in spreadsheet form via the ABS website.

Developments
The main medium-term developments in the program are to:

• extend Retail Trade’s coverage to include service industries, particularly those which have become more significant in household consumption expenditures, and investigate the appropriateness of an activity-based collection versus an industry-based approach – due Dec 2012
• investigate extending the collection of inventories data for a broader selection of industries – due March 2013
• review Finance sector in Quality Business Intelligence Services (QBIS) – due June 2013
• investigate expanding the scope of QBIS to include Public Corporations – due September 2013.

References

Topics @ a Glance - Business Indicators