1. Scottish National Accounts Project - SNAP! Sandy Stewart Scottish Government

2. Presentation  What we currently produce  What users want  Developments – the Scottish National Accounts Project (SNAP) – Experimental statistics  Issues for ONS

3. What we currently produce  Quarterly GVA (P) estimates  Quarterly Index of Manufactured Exports  Annual Input-Output tables  Annual Global Connections Survey  Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland  Scottish Economic Statistics – compendium  Government activity and productivity  Experimental statistics – SNAP

4. What users want  More timely short term indicators  More coherence between economic statistics  Fewer revisions over time  More time-series analysis  Public Sector Finances and National Accounts for Scotland – related analysis  Onshore – offshore analyses  More modelling work – social/economic/environmental

5. Press comments – this week  “This tardiness in the publication of Scottish Government (GDP) statistics is a continuing scandal” – Scotsman 21/4/09  “Scotland’s GDP numbers: An amazing case of statistical mince” – Scotsman 22/4/09 – criticism of chain-linking (Delphic mysteries) and seasonal adjustment (need peaks and troughs)  “But there were some anomalies in the GDP figures..” – Scotsman 23/4/09

6. Scottish National Accounts Project (SNAP)  Estimating quarterly GDP (production, income and expenditure approaches)  Use of I-O framework to ‘balance’ and benchmark short term estimates  I-O tables from 1998 to be dynamic, reflecting methodology and definitional changes over time  Constructing artificial SU matrices quarterly – for modelling and impact studies  Creating experimental national accounts for Scotland (household, industry, trade and environmental accounts)  CGE modelling

8. Issues for ONS  Considerable help and support from NA and RA teams  Strong working relationships – especially Peer Review processes, links to UKCeMGA  Very helpful responses to increased requests for data  Concern about quality of IDBR  Concern about UK Input-Output activity  Concern about sample sizes of UK surveys