Quarterly sector accounts
Producer: Statistics Finland
Homepage: http://www.stat.fi/til/sekn/index_en.html
Main topic: National Accounts
Related topics: Government Finance
Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Yes
European Statistical System (ESS): Yes
Description
Sector accounts are part of national accounts. Sector accounts form a large, uniform whole consisting of the non-financial and financial accounts of each institutional sector. In national accounts, non-financial accounts refer to accounts that are used to describe the value of production activities of goods and ser-vices, and the income flows generated by this activity and their progress in the economy. Financial accounts are accounts that describe the stocks of financial assets and liabilities and changes in them. Real and financial accounts are linked to each other, because the deficit or surplus formed of income and expenditure in the non-financial accounts is visible in the financial side of the accounting system as an increase/decrease in assets or liabilities. This statistic focuses on the non-financial account side of sector accounts. It describes each sector’s production, income formation, income distribution, income use and the net lending resulting from these transactions, i.e. the change in the sector's financial position. Financial accounts compile statistics on the financial accounts side of sector accounts.
Data content
The upper part of quarterly sector accounts describes production and income formation. It is uniform with industryspecific quarterly accounts. After production and income formation, redistribution of income through taxation, social security contributions and income transfers is described. The sector's saving is derived as a balancing item. The capital account following the income redistribution account describes investments, capital transfers and other formation of real assets. The net lending showing financial surplus/deficit is formed as a difference of all this income and expenditure, which is reflected on the financial side of sector accounts (in financial accounts) as an increase or a decrease in financial assets. The statistical release contains time series from the first quarter of 1999 up to the quarter under review. The data are public.
Quarterly sector accounts depict national accounts using the same concepts and definitions as the annual sector accounts. Quarterly sector accounts are, however, based on indicators and are thus based more on estimates than annual accounts data. Quarterly data are also somewhat more aggregated than annual accounts data. The data indicate, for instance, changes in households’ saving and disposable income and in their use. The data also show the financial surplus or deficit of domestic sectors, that is, to what degree they have to borrow from each other and the rest of the world. Further, it is possible to examine enterprises’ ope-rating surplus, i.e. their profits. Quarterly sector accounts also cover general government sector ac-counts, which are published as a separate, more detailed statistic (General government revenue and expenditure by quarter).
The compilation of data is based on an EU regulation. The European Central Bank uses national non-financial sector accounts together with financial accounts to compile Euro Area Accounts, which have an important role in, for example, monetary policy. The data content is based on the European System of Accounts ESA2010, which complies with the worldwide SNA 2008 (System of National Accounts) recommendation for national accounts.
Classifications used
Classification of Sectors 2012, classification of transactions according to ESA2010.
Data collection methods and data sources
Quarterly sector accounts are produced using indicators. This means that the development of the com-ponents of sector accounts is estimated with indicators that must follow as closely as possible the corresponding components of annual accounts that the indicators are aimed to estimate. In the calculation, the development of these indicators is benchmarked to the annual accounts figures, which makes the components of quarterly and annual accounts congruent. Some common data that are used in annual statistics are also used in the quarterly sector accounts compilation. Parts of the data are therefore uni-form with the annual data by default.
The indicators used in the calculation are based on different economic statistics and data produced by Statistics Finland and other agencies. The list below contains only Statistics Finland’s own separate data collections.
Data collections
Updating frequency
Quarterly.
Time of completion or release
Completed three months after the end of each quarter.
Time series
The time series starts from the year 1999.
Keywords
disposable income, expenditure, government finance, income, national accounts, net lending, sector accounts, sectors, households, non-financial corporations
Contact information
http://tilastokeskus.fi/til/sekn/yht_en.html
Last updated 22.09.2014