Economic Trends Vol 614 January 2005

The OFFICE FOR NATIONAL STATISTICS (ONS) is the government department that provides UK statistical and registration services. ONS is responsible for producing a wide range of key economic and social statistics which are used by policy makers across government to create evidence-based policies and monitor performance against them. The Office also builds and maintains data sources both for itself and for its business and research customers. It makes statistics available so that everyone can easily assess the state of the nation, the performance of government, and their own position.

Feature Articles:

Revisions to Quarterly GDP Growth and its Production and Expenditure Components

This article presents the results of the latest GDP Revisions Analysis, updating the previous article published in December 2003. It investigates the change from the first to the latest estimate of the quarterly growth in GDP, and the quarterly growth rates for the main components of the expenditure and production measures of GDP.

Publication of Revisions Triangles on the National Statistics Website

Starting in late December 2004 the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will issue revisions triangles for all the main published key indicators. These will add to the information about revisions which is already published and further help users see the statistics in context to aid their interpretation. An article in Economic Trends in March 2004 (Jenkinson and Stuttard, 2004) described this information. The triangles will be posted on a special section of the National Statistics website dealing with revisions issues.

Forthcoming Changes to the Blue Book 2005:

The article explains the sources of revision to GDP estimates planned for the UK National Accounts The Blue Book 2005, In general, the revisions policy employed for the 2005 Blue Book is that periods from the first quarter of 2002 onwards will be open for revisions.

Regular Items:

Economic Update January 2005
Forecasts for the UK economy December 2004
International Economic Indicators January 2005