National accounts (income, saving, assets, and liabilities): September 2025 quarter Data Collection

1. Introduction National accounts (income, saving, assets, and liabilities) for New Zealand was published for the first time in June 2021; the data is updated each quarter, and timeseries are available from June 2016 quarter onwards. The series in these accounts are in current (nominal) price, in both actual and seasonally adjusted terms. The National accounts (income, saving, assets, and liabilities): Sources and methods are thoroughly documented. The data used to compile our estimates of quarterly income, saving, assets, and liabilities are the best that we have available at that point in time. When compiling our quarterly estimates, we usually face trade-offs between timeliness and the quality, coverage, length of historical series, and conceptual alignment of available data sources. As a result, the methodologies vary depending on the data available and are underpinned by certain assumptions. These statistics are experimental and may be subject to greater change than other releases as we improve methodology or include more comprehensive data. Part of the rationale for releasing estimates on an experimental basis is to allow users an opportunity to comment on methods and details of published series. If you have any feedback or comments that you’d like to pass on, or for more information on changes, email [email protected]. The quarterly income measure of gross domestic product (GDPI), along with total economy compensation of employees, gross operating surplus and gross mixed income, taxes on production and imports, and subsidies became official in the December 2023 quarter and were most recently published in Gross domestic product: September 2025 quarter on 18 September 2025. Income by institutional sector and saving, assets and liabilities measures will remain experimental and continue to be published shortly after the quarterly GDP release. 1.1 Incorporating data from the annual national accounts Each year, we make regular updates to the most recent data in the annual national accounts. These updates generally reflect more accurate data becoming available from the underlying data sources, such as the low-level financial data that becomes available with the annual enterprise survey update. The annual national accounts are released in November each year and present a comprehensive view of the economy that draws together data from more detailed but less timely sources. We incorporate these updates in the September quarter. The availability of more detailed data allows us to understand the level of activity that has occurred over the period and reflect these in our estimates of quarterly and annual economic growth. Reconciling quarterly measures to annual values is a process called benchmarking. This process largely preserves the pattern of quarter-on-quarter movements drawn from the quarterly indicator series but scales the series to match the level of the annual benchmark. National accounts (industry production and investment): Year ended March 2024 provides annual benchmarks for consolidated accounts up to the year ended March 2024. This annual benchmarking process causes data updates to final consumption expenditure (FCE), compensation of employees, gross operating surplus and gross mixed income, taxes on production and imports, and subsidies. National accounts (income and expenditure): Year ended March 2025 provides benchmarks for most domestic sectors in the institutional sector accounts up to and including the year ended March 2024. The central government sector is benchmarked up to and including the year ended March 2025. Annual balance sheets: 2024 (provisional) provides the annual balance sheet benchmarks for all institutional sectors up to March 2024. This annual benchmarking process causes revisions to most institutional sectors and to numerous instruments within the balance sheets. As a result of these revisions the balancing of financial assets and liabilities has also been revised causing final revisions to equity. 2025 preview of national accounts improvements and updates has more information on the range of revisions to annual national accounts statistics. 2.Data Collection and Methodology changes 2.1 Source data updates 2.1.1 Updates from Gross Domestic Product (GDP) series GDP estimates are reflected in National accounts (income, saving, assets, and liabilities) where the same series are used in both publications. Other than incorporating data from the annual national accounts, in this release, there are data updates flowing through from GDP to the following series in the consolidated accounts and institutional sector accounts: Final Consumption Expenditure Updates to household sector final consumption expenditure from 2006 onwards due to updates to quarterly household registration of used motor vehicles and minor updates from respondent data. Changes to central government final consumption expenditure affecting June 2025 quarter due to timing issues with respondent data. Change in inventories Changes due to updates to Business Financial Data (BFD), affecting December 2022 onwards. There were also minor updates from respondent’s data affecting December 2024 quarter onwards. We have also made coherence adjustments during the process of reconciling change in inventories with other movements in production and expenditure series. This process is designed to minimise inconsistencies in timing and valuation. Gross fixed capital formation Changes due to incorporating updated value of building work put in place data (also known as Quarterly Building Activity Survey – QBAS) affecting December 2024 quarter onwards, and other changes coming from updated respondent data. We have also improved our quarterly method to include quarterly data for investment on the City Rail Link project. This update accompanies changes to the treatment of the project in our annual GFKF, and impacts estimates of non-residential building and other construction GFKF. We have also updated how our compilation process includes the various indicators for government investment in other construction assets. Compensation of employees Changes due to updates to Business Financial Data (BFD), affecting December 2023 quarter onwards. Gross operating surplus, gross mixed income, entrepreneurial income, and entrepreneurial withdrawals Changes due to updates to Business Financial Data (BFD), Quarterly Building Activity Survey data, Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured (FISIM), Quarterly Local Authority Survey (QLAS), and other data sources, largely affecting the estimates from March 2013 quarter onwards. Taxes on production and imports payable An improvement to the treatment of year-to-date transactions in government data has been incorporated. This has resulted in updated estimates of taxes on production and imports payable. See Gross domestic product: September 2025 quarter – changes and data updates for further information. 2.1.2 Updates from Balance of Payments (BOP) and International Investment Position (IIP) The Rest of World sector is subject to updates in all accounts each quarter due to BOP and IIP updates. These changes are due mainly to respondents updating their previously reported data, which affects the most recent previously published quarter. In addition, changes to methods used in compiling BOP and IIP are introduced once each year, in the June quarter BOP and IIP release. These can affect quarterly data over several years, and result in updates in the June quarter releases of National accounts (income, saving, assets, and liabilities). All accounts can be updated according to changes in the Rest of World sector, and updates to the Rest of World sector may result in changes to resident sectors that are estimated from the counterparty dimension of BOP and IIP data. Series affected by updates from Balance of Payments include all series in the Rest of World sector, and include the following series for other sectors: Interest Dividends Reinvested earnings on direct investment Investment income payable to and receivable from the rest of the world Non-life insurance claims and premiums Miscellaneous current transfers Debt securities, with flow on impacts to equity. See 2025 balance of payments and national accounts: Data sources and methods for further information. 2.1.3 Updates to land Quarterly estimates of non-produced non-financial assets (land) are derived by using annual land estimates from Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) property values by property type, quarterly CoreLogic residential property estimates for recent quarters, and movements in the Cotality House Price Index (HPI) in latest quarters when residential property estimates are not yet available. The HPI estimates for the most recent two quarters are updated as Cotality collects more data on housing and land transactions. Thus, given the total value of housing and land in New Zealand (over one trillion dollars), it is expected that updated HPI values may contribute to substantial changes in some sectors. This is particularly the case for the non-financial business enterprises sector (which contains most of the residential property operators) and the household sector. In quarters after the latest annual balance sheet benchmarks, property values are used as a control total for each sector, then estimates for non-financial assets such as buildings and land improvements are deducted, to derive land estimates as a residual. 2.2 Methodology changes 2.2.1 Refinement of central government series. The primary source of central government data is CFIS. Stats NZ has introduced new programs to process CFIS data and translate it to SNA concepts. While the new programs focused on improving reliability and efficiency of compilation, they were an opportunity to improve some of the mapping of detailed CFIS data to SNA concepts. This has resulted in improvements in income and expenditure flows and balance sheet positions. Because this affects quarterly indicator series, and mostly not annual benchmarks, these changes in series sum to zero in each year ended March for income and expenditure series, or match existing March values for balance sheet series. Central government improvements have a subsequent impact on other sectors. Total receipts across sectors for each transaction need to be balanced by payments for that transaction. Likewise, total balance sheet holdings of financial assets need to be balanced with holdings of financial liabilities. The balancing process usually requires adjustments to the transactions or asset types for some sectors. Given the changes to central government series there are subsequent changes to estimates for some other series as a result of balancing. 3 Changes to previously published statistics 3.1 Changes to Income and Outlay statistics 3.1.1 Changes to household saving Household saving is the residual of disposable income and expenditure. Therefore, changes occur due to updates to any of the associated contributing series. Additionally, for the September quarter, with the implementation of the annual benchmarks, changes can result from both updates to the benchmark series and the quarterly indicator series. Changes to compensation of employees, entrepreneurial income and non-life insurance claims receivable were the main contributors to the changes in household saving in the June 2025 quarter. The largest changes were to the March 2024 and March 2025 quarters. The primary drivers to this were changes to dividends received, coming from updated tax data, and to entrepreneurial income from non-corporate businesses including trusts, which was also driven by changes to dividends received. See National accounts (income and expenditure): Year ended March 2025 | Stats NZ for more information on revisions to the annual benchmarks. The following table shows the previously published and updated quarterly household saving from the June 2016–June 2025 quarters. Table 1. Household saving ($million) in current prices, actual values (not seasonally adjusted) Quarter Published October 2025 Published January 2026 Change in value Jun-16 -831 -782 49 Sep-16 -1,143 -986 157 Dec-16 -1,747 -1,613 134 Mar-17 1,000 1,045 45 Jun-17 -1,731 -1,696 35 Sep-17 -1,237 -1,093 144 Dec-17 -1,277 -1,143 134 Mar-18 974 1,080 106 Jun-18 -945 -921 24 Sep-18 -978 -808 170 Dec-18 -1,352 -1,246 106 Mar-19 1,116 1,142 26 Jun-19 -141 -146 -5 Sep-19 519 577 58 Dec-19 -252 -434 -182 Mar-20 2,505 2,327 -178 Jun-20 6,531 6,344 -187 Sep-20 2,937 2,820 -117 Dec-20 1,897 1,785 -112 Mar-21 4,168 4,012 -156 Jun-21 74 -181 -255 Sep-21 3,911 3,688 -223 Dec-21 623 396 -227 Mar-22 1,201 1,234 33 Jun-22 -1,070 -891 179 Sep-22 -1,106 -817 289 Dec-22 -3,592 -3,360 232 Mar-23 126 262 136 Jun-23 -597 -336 261 Sep-23 -456 -99 357 Dec-23 -2,274 -1,947 327 Mar-24 2,912 4,811 1,899 Jun-24 179 509 330 Sep-24 -206 215 421 Dec-24 -1,624 -941 683 Mar-25 2,227 3,768 1,541 Jun-25 723 1,441 718 3.2. Changes to Balance Sheet statistics 3.2.1 Changes to household net worth Changes in household net worth largely reflect the annual incorporation of updated data. Changes to household net worth in the June 2025 quarter are substantially larger than earlier quarters due mainly to the changes in household equity assets. This component contributed just over 86 percent of the household net worth change. The household sector is the balancing sector for equity assets, thus changes in any other sector’s equity liabilities can result in changes to final equity assets to the household sector to balance. The other major component is the change in residential land. As noted above, in the section 2.1.3 Updates to land, the previous quarter HPI estimates used as an indicator have been revised from the initial provisional estimate. This change in non-financial assets also contributed to the value change in household net worth. The following table shows the previously published and updated quarterly household net worth for the June 2016–June 2025 quarters. Table 2. Household net worth ($million) in current prices, actual values (not seasonally adjusted) Quarter Published October 2025 Published January 2026 Change in value Jun-16 1,445,954 1,438,862 -7,092 Sep-16 1,500,669 1,490,349 -10,320 Dec-16 1,526,265 1,512,569 -13,696 Mar-17 1,535,327 1,536,371 1,044 Jun-17 1,572,378 1,569,350 -3,028 Sep-17 1,603,867 1,601,565 -2,302 Dec-17 1,636,784 1,633,274 -3,510 Mar-18 1,652,095 1,654,005 1,910 Jun-18 1,657,898 1,663,143 5,245 Sep-18 1,694,339 1,686,619 -7,720 Dec-18 1,703,783 1,698,691 -5,092 Mar-19 1,725,152 1,725,678 526 Jun-19 1,715,468 1,714,293 -1,175 Sep-19 1,741,620 1,736,815 -4,805 Dec-19 1,777,520 1,776,516 -1,004 Mar-20 1,804,043 1,805,528 1,485 Jun-20 1,827,202 1,826,412 -790 Sep-20 1,897,623 1,896,805 -818 Dec-20 2,015,512 2,021,097 5,585 Mar-21 2,137,953 2,140,795 2,842 Jun-21 2,229,917 2,226,229 -3,688 Sep-21 2,352,883 2,333,701 -19,182 Dec-21 2,477,402 2,475,891 -1,511 Mar-22 2,471,910 2,473,672 1,762 Jun-22 2,415,984 2,414,863 -1,121 Sep-22 2,398,032 2,385,914 -12,118 Dec-22 2,405,940 2,429,164 23,224 Mar-23 2,401,622 2,432,616 30,994 Jun-23 2,389,151 2,431,388 42,237 Sep-23 2,423,117 2,469,359 46,242 Dec-23 2,447,004 2,494,873 47,869 Mar-24 2,467,460 2,524,625 57,165 Jun-24 2,443,973 2,498,426 54,453 Sep-24 2,442,668 2,513,124 70,456 Dec-24 2,470,944 2,541,705 70,761 Mar-25 2,477,535 2,546,766 69,231 Jun-25 2,465,455 2,545,567 80,112 en-NZ