Scottish Government

SESCG 1/2/2004 - QUALITY ASSURANCE OF SCOTTISH INPUT OUTPUT TABLES 2001

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Introduction

This paper was sent out as an email from Claire Boag on 15th November, which requested input from interested members to the development of the Scottish Input-Output tables for 2001. The tables are due be published on December 15th 2004. More information on the input-output tables can be found at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/about/FCSD/OCEA/00014713/index.aspx.

There have been a number of changes to the methodology since last year which may cause apparent discontinuities if the results for 2001 are compared with the published 2000 tables. The main changes are outlined below. Comments on both the methodology changes and the results shown in the attached Excel spreadsheet would be most welcome.

Constraining Gross Value Added (GVA) to Regional Accounts

In previous years, we constrained the input-output GVA to Regional Accounts (RA) GVA at the Scotland level. However, this year, we have constrained both the GVA and Compensation of Employees (CoE) to RA at the 32 industry group level. In most cases, any difference between the original IO GVA and Regional Accounts GVA for an industry group was scaled across the input-output categories within the RA group. However, where we felt there was justification, manual adjustments to an industry's CoE or GVA were made. In order to maintain the industry output, any changes made to the GVA were offset by corresponding changes to the intermediate consumption.

Adjusting ABI SIC codes

The GDP branch use company level ABI data in the derivation of weights for chain linking Scottish GDP. They make adjustments to the ABI data where it is considered that companies had been allocated to the wrong SIC. This year, for the first time, the IO branch has taken these changes on board. The effect of these changes is outlined below:

Household and Tourism Final Demand

A considerable amount of work has been undertaken to improve the tourism data used in the input-output tables. UK Tourism Survey (UKTS) data and International Passenger Survey (IPS) data were combined with information from the Expenditure & Food Survey (EFS) to create a detailed expenditure breakdown, which was then mapped to input-output categories, to produce an improved Tourism final demand column.

The Household final demand column has also been revised. In the absence of Regional Accounts consumer expenditure data for Scotland, this column has been estimated by combining EFS Scotland:UK expenditure ratios with the UK IO table 4 (Households final consumption expenditure by COICOP heading) to create Scottish Household Expenditure. Separate estimates were made for the tourist component of household expenditure, i.e. domestic overnight tourists, and domestic day visitors.

Sea Fishing and Fish Farming

• Industry Output - The ABI has been used to estimate industry output of fish farming for the first time, as it is now considered to be robust enough to use in this way.
• Exports - For a number of years, fishing exports from Scotland have exceeded the value of UK exports. They were estimated based on previous Scottish figures scaled using industry growth. Because, historically, Scotland had better data on this sector than the UK, no adjustments were made to the data. However, this year, for sea fishing, exports data were obtained from the Scottish Executive's Sea Fishing statistics. This data is considered to be accurate (barring illegal landings) as, by law, the catching sector must supply the volume and value of their landings for each trip. A provisional estimate for RoW exports of farmed fish was obtained by scaling down the previous years exports according to the change made to the sea fishing RoW exports. This is not ideal, but it brings fish farming exports more into line with the UK and with the Global Connections Survey results. Note that this estimate might change if suitable data can be obtained.