Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is often considered the most critical indicator of the performance economy. EconData has supplied Statistics South Africa’s (StatsSA’s) GDP measures since its inception, however, we initially did not supply the data from all the sheets in the rest of that Excel file. We now do, and this has incremented the NATL_ACC dataflow version to 2.0.0.
The previous version 1.4.0 only supplied GDP data at the national level, and gross value added by industry. (The minor versions in major version 1 were due to the changes in the base year.) Thanks to work by Sinead Morrow, we have expanded the dataflow to encompass
- Industry value added
- Expenditure on GDP
- Final consumption expenditure by households
- Gross fixed capital formation
- Change in inventories by kind of economic activity
- Compensation of employees
- Gross operating surplus and net other taxes on production
at the national level, and across industries, consumer expenditure categories, and other sectors.
In order to cater for the expanded number of series, we needed to adjust the structure of the series code from three dimensions, evident with read_registry("data-structure", id="NATL_ACC", version="1.4.0")
- Mnemonic (source identifier and series name)
- Price concept (real vs nominal)
- Seasonal adjustment
to the new structure with five dimensions, evident with read_registry("data-structure", id="NATL_ACC", version="2.0.0")
- Mnemonic (where the version 2
CL_NATIONAL_ACCOUNTScodelist now represents the sub-set of series in the dataflow, each stemming from one or two sheets in the Excel file). This list is shown in the bullet list higher up in this blog post. - Economic Activity: defined in the SDMX registry as a “combination of actions that result in the production, distribution and consumption of goods or services.” Our codelist includes industries, consumer expenditure categories, and sectors.
- Frequency of the time series (quarterly or annual).
- Price Transformation (real or nominal)
- Seasonal Adjustment (non-seasonallly adjusted, or seasonally adjusted)
We have also included a time transformation attribute in the metadata table (for example, to indicate where quarterly values have been annualized), and a label, amongst the usual attributes.
Please consult our user guide for more details and examples. You can access this dataflow in the graphical EconData app by clicking on the “Public Finance and Accounts” category scheme, as shown in the screenshot below.
Using the new compensation of employees data, Sinead Morrow compiled the following chart, which shows that nominal wages rose faster than general inflation between 2009 and 2021.
