National accounts input-output tables: General information

General information Consistency between periodical input-output tables and annual national accounts Input-output tables are consistent with the published annual national accounts data, specifically the national accounts industry production and investment. However, input output tables do not incorporate revisions made by more recent annual releases. The Annual Enterprise Survey (AES) is a main data source for the tables, but many other data sources are used to compile the accounts. See Annual national accounts sources and methods for more information. Valuation differs between the annual national accounts publication and the input-output tables. In the annual national accounts industry production and investment information releases the detailed industry output and value-added data is valued at producers’ prices. For the input-output tables we derive a valuation at basic prices. This means, for example, that industry value-added measures differ between the two releases. The differences relate generally to taxes on products, which are separated out in the basic price valuation. Frequency of input-output tables We do not revise any published input-output tables when updated data or methods are introduced in new annual national accounts releases. The input-output tables are normally released every five years. Due to the sheer quantity of data included in input-output tables, information for many cells is updated only periodically to avoid excessive costs and respondent burden. Similarly, cells with small values may not be confronted regularly as they aren’t considered significant. These two factors can generate anomalous results but shouldn’t generally affect the tables’ usefulness for analysis. Product information We generally source product detail for sales and purchases by industries from the Commodity Data Collection (CDC) survey. This is a rolling data collection to update the product breakdowns for sales and purchases of industries in national accounts, and to update the lower-level weights for the business price indexes. It aims to cover all industries over 8 to 12 years. The rolling nature of the CDC means that this source data for the annual supply and use balancing process originates from different years. We also make use of commodity data from available sources such as the AES returns, Household Economic Survey, imports and exports data, and specific industry source such as the Information Communications Technology (ICT) survey, and administrative sources where available. Allocation of imports The imports table shows the detailed allocation of imports of goods and services to use categories. We directly allocated imports proportional to total use. We calculated the proportion of each product’s total use that could be attributed to imports, then multiplied it by the respective use of each industry or final user. For example, if industry A and B use $40 million and $60 million of product C, which has total use of $100 million and imports of $20 million, then the import allocation of product C for industry A would be 20/100*40= $8 million, and $12 million for industry B. A result of the direct allocation of imports to industries is that inter-industry transaction flows in the transactions table may not reflect the technological input structure of the industry. However, a more sophisticated allocation raises significant data and confidentiality problems. Fringe benefit values In cases where goods and services have been provided to employees free of charge or at a markedly reduced cost, the goods and services (or fringe benefits) have been valued in output at the cost of production. A similar amount is included in compensation of employees and household final consumption expenditure. In the input-output tables, we allocate the fringe benefit values to the specific relevant goods and services. The allocation of fringe benefit tax values to individual commodities is based on 2001 data, which is the last time this level of detail was collected by Inland Revenue. Confidentiality The input-output tables use the Australian and New Zealand Standard Industrial Classification 2006 (ANZSIC06) for industry classification and the National Accounts Commodity Classification 2006 (NA06CC) for product classification. The industries are published in categories specified in the New Zealand Standard Industrial Output Classification (NZSIOC), consistent with the annual national accounts. Some industries and commodities may be combined to preserve the confidentiality of individual businesses. Feedback We’d like to hear from users about any unusual results they consider significant, so we can target them for improvement in future releases of input-output tables. Please send your feedback to [email protected] with “National accounts input-output tables” in the subject line. en-NZ