Period-specific information: Year ended March 2021

Scope of regional gross domestic product Region by industry estimates for the March years 2000–2020 Regional GDP industry estimates for 2000 to 2020 are based on national industry data from National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2020. The industry data for this period has been ‘balanced’ using the national accounting supply-use framework. For most industries, unit-level financial data has been utilised to aggregate to a national total (known as the ‘bottom-up’ approach). For regional GDP these same sources are used and matched to geographic information also available at unit level, allowing us to allocate national industry GDP figures to regions. The use of firm-level data to apply bottom-up methods follows international best practice and provides the strongest source of regional data for most industries. For more information, see Regional gross domestic product: General information. Provisional estimates for the year to March 2021 The unit-level data sources noted above are not available for the provisional year. We use other data sources having a regional dimension to derive industry provisional estimates. These get aggregated into regional-level GDP totals. We do not regard these figures as being of the same quality as the pre-2021 balanced years, therefore we only provide provisional estimates for region totals. COVID-19 and the calculation of regional GDP’s provisional estimate The March 2021 year includes periods where COVID-19 restrictions and business support programmes were in place. We knew that due to this, possible measurement issues could arise with certain data sources normally used to gauge regional economic activity in the provisional year. We were also aware that Auckland had an additional 25 days of alert level 3 lockdown while the remainder of the country was at alert level 2. This added to our concern that normal provisional-year data sources may not be sufficiently capturing differential regional impacts in some industries. We evaluated alternative regional data sources for affected industries that should not be distorted by the Government’s interventions and made changes where our analysis indicated the alternative source provided an improved estimate. Revisions We incorporated revisions to national industry totals published in November 2021. These revisions affect the national totals that are allocated to regions. See 2021 preview of national accounts improvements for more information. We updated regional allocation proportions with new input data, which includes updated annual enterprise survey data and LEED. These updates affect the proportional allocation to regions. en-NZ