A BRIEF REVIEW OF SOME PROBLEMS IN USING NATIONAL ACCOUNTS DATA IN LEVEL OF OUTPUT COMPARISONS AND GROWTH-STUDIES

After an initial burst of enthusiasm for establishing their national accounts 30 or 40 years ago, some countries have made continuous improvements, while others have done little to maintain even their initial system. Presently most developing countries make their basic estimate of GDP from the production side, and most do not have adequate surveys to permit a consistency check of their production and expenditure side estimates. The base surveys for expenditures and production are typically over ten years old, and the lags in basic surveys for constructing constant price estimates are frequently longer. A number of countries estimate their growth from a weighted average of volume indexes and make no attempt at direct deflation; many of those that do deflate their current expenditure estimates do so at a very aggregate level. Users of national accounts should be aware of the varying quality of the estimates across countries and hopefully continual questioning of the numbers will help to encourage improvement.