South Africa’s statistics agency has rebased its gross domestic product (GDP) survey and added previously excluded activities that could lead to revisions of past economic growth numbers, officials said on Friday.
Joe de Beer, executive manager for national accounts at Statistics South Africa, told reporters the GDP data to be released later this month would give a more accurate picture of the size of and conditions within Africa’s biggest economy.
National accounts would be benchmarked and rebased to the year 2005 from 2000 as part of a regular five-yearly revision.
Previous rebasings have led to big increases in the size of the economy — 13,7% a decade ago and 3,5% for data released in 2004 — and on both occasions growth was revised upwards.
However, those changes were also affected by other substantive changes that were made to the survey and the revision may not be as large this year.
The new data will include calculations for the ”non-observed economy”, including estimates of illegal activities such as the drugs trade and abalone poaching, unregistered professionals and expanded estimates for the informal sector.
”We are including estimates for those activities to make sure we capture all economic activity,” De Beer said.
Stats SA will give third-quarter growth figures on November 24, and revisions to data going back to the first quarter of 2002.
The current size of the South Africa’s economy is about R2,5-trillion.
But De Beer said there was no guarantee that growth for previous years would be higher given possible changes to the formal economy from more accurate benchmarking.
Any revisions will impact on other indicators, including the budget deficit, which the Treasury has estimated will swell to a record 7,6% of GDP in the current financial year. — Reuters