Quarterly National Accounts Orientation
UNSD Workshop on National Accounts
6-9 July 2009, New Delhi, India
UN Statistics Division
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Outline of presentation
 What are Quarterly National Accounts (QNA)?
 Short term indicators and QNA
 Why Quarterly National accounts?
 Advantages and Limitations of QNA
 Approaches, data sources, data issues, etc
 Discussion
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
Quarterly National Accounts (QNA) is an integrated and
consistent system of macroeconomic accounts designed to
describe the entire system of production on a quarterly basis.

QNA provides a picture of current economic developments
that is more timely and frequent than provided by Annual
National Accounts (ANA) and more comprehensive than that
provided by individual short-term indicators.
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
All economic agents want to follow the business cycle and
identify turning points as accurately and as rapidly as
possible.

Short term indicators shows whether the economy is
growing, is stagnating or is declining.

Most common short term indicators are :Volume of
Industrial Production, Price indices, employment and
unemployment growth rates.

Need short term indicators to start compilation of QNA
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QNA are available later than the short term indicators,
But,
 QNA aggregates are more comprehensive in their description
of the behaviour of the economy

QNA is compiled within the framework of an integrated
accounting structure that allows consistency checks- IMF
manual “Quarterly National Manual” 2001,which is based on
1993 SNA.

QNA usually less complete than ANA because of constraints
relating to time, resources and data availability.
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
A vital indicator for planning and policy purposes

Early identification of changes in trend

Timely implementation of economic policies

Framework for business cycle analysis

Better forecasts, including early estimates of annual accounts

IMF Special Data Dissemination Standards (SDDS) data
requirement
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Over annual accounts
Advantages
Timeliness: (First estimates shortly after each quarter)
Over specific current indicators
Comprehensiveness (more comprehensive in the description of
the economy)
Limitations

Less reliable, less detail, less comprehensive
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Compared with annual accounts
 Less reliable
 Less detail
 Less comprehensive
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Basic requirement :



QGDP by activity at current and constant prices
Expenditure on QGDP
National Income and Saving
Advance level:
Full sequence of accounts
 Balance sheet
 Output, intermediate consumption and value added by groups of industries
 Seasonally adjusted data in addition to the original data.
Note: The level of compilation is determined by availability of resources and
data.
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1. Take inventory of available monthly/quarterly source data .
2. Understand the annual compilation methods.
3. Design compilation methods and procedures.
4. Review quality of source data and compilation procedures.
5. Design processing system
6. Generate time series (back series) of QNA data (five years).
7. Produce experimental quarterly series.
8. Analyze trend and discuss findings with main users.
9. Document methodology.
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
Same sources used for annual accounts may be available on
quarterly: Foreign trade, central government, financial sector

A minimum set of actual data is necessary to provide
meaningful QNA estimates

As the availability of a set of quarterly survey data is scarce,
indirect methods of estimation are used

For each component, the indicator that best captures the
growth rate of the target variable in the past and in future
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 Relationship to the sources and methods used in the
annual estimates
 Are the same sources available quarterly?
 Are other sources available quarterly?
 Are there alternative sources available for the same
item?
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A. For benchmark data - conducted every five to
ten years

Census of Economic Activities

Census of Agriculture and Livestock

Household Consumption/Budget Survey

Agricultural Cost of Production Survey

Labour Force Survey
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B. For regular QNA compilation





Quarterly sample survey of key “drivers”
Quarterly accounting statements of enterprises
Monthly data from administrative records (data on exports
and imports from Customs, data on taxes on production and on
turnover from tax department, data on turnover from the VAT
system – a new and very important source for QNA
Prices and Price indices (CPI, PPI, Wage Index ,Construction
price index, Export and Import price index)
Indirect indicators of production, disposals, employment and
other inputs
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Variables
current
values
prices
volumes
Output



Intermediate
consumption



Value added
Residual
Implicit
Residual
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Assessment of individual indicators

Definitions of source data






Coverage
Units
Classifications
Accuracy in predicting annual changes
Reliability – revision of indicators
Timeliness
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

Usually output (value and/or volumes) only is available:
 Deflate value to get constant prices
 Inflate volume to get current prices
 Should inflate output and IC separately with appropriate price
indices
Sometimes indirect /proxy indicators on inputs are used
 Employment / hours worked
 Earnings,
 Major components of intermediate consumption
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Fixed (I/O,VA/O, IC/O) ratios are usually assumed


Better assumption at constant prices than current prices

Desirable to show calculated output and intermediate
consumption explicitly
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
Long production cycles: Agricultural activities Construction,
Manufacturing have production cycles that exceed three
months. Production taking place in each quarter must be
valued and recorded as work-in-progress.

Timing errors: initial quarterly estimates tend to be affected
by delays in the collection and processing of the basic data
than annual estimates.

Indicator bias: indicator is used as a proxy for the target
variable but the relationship between the proxy and the target
variable may be weak
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 Resources and possibilities are limited
 Collection of detailed data
 Time consuming
 Expensive
 Respondents’ burden
 Frequent collection of detailed data may not be possible
Need for a well-planned data collection strategy
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
Some suggestions
 A limited set of monthly/quarterly source data on a timely
basis
 Some detailed monthly/quarterly with less timely basis
 MOUs with key Ministries e.g Ministry of Finance for VAT
statistics
 Most detailed and comprehensive data
 On a annual or
 Less frequent basis
 Comprehensive censuses and surveys (Benchmarks) on a
periodic basis (5 – 10 years)
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Thank You