MAIN ECONOMIC INDICATORS DATABASE NOTES

MAY 2003

AVAILABLE ON DISK FROM 07-05-2003
(STA05)DBNotes/May

NATIONAL ACCOUNTS

From April 2003 National Accounts data are entirely consistent with OECD Quaterly National Accounts.

All national accounts series previously included in MEI have been removed and new series from the OECD Quarterly National Accounts database have been included.

The attached file NEWSERIES_QNA.CSV contains a list of the new National Accounts series included as part of the MEI in April 2003
The attached file SUPPSERIES_QNA.CSV contains a list of National Accounts series previously included on the MEI file i.e. up to March 2003, that have been removed.

In order to facilitate cross country comparisons, seasonally adjusted volume indices are now available for OECD Member countries (except for Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Luxemburg, Poland, Slovak Republic and Turkey) for:

Gross Domestic Product
Private final consumption expenditure
Governement final consumption expenditure
Gross fixed capital formation
Exports of goods and services
Imports of goods and services

Zone estimates are calculated using country data converted from national currencies by the 1995 GDP Purchasing Power Parity (PPP).

Series are quarterly with the exception of Greece and Luxembourg who do not currently produce quarterly national accounts.

Gross Domestic Product and Expenditure on GDP are also available at market prices in national currency.
Quarterly data are at quarterly levels except for Canada, Mexico, the United States and Japan who publish quarterly national accounts data at annual levels.


Series identifier for Quarterly national Accounts are built in the following way:

Country code.Series code.Measure code

The country code is the ISO country code.

Series codes and titles are standardised whenever the data are comparable.
See below the standard set of titles and corresponding codes.
However, when a series is substantially different from the standardised title,
the difference is indicated both in the title and in the series code.

Series Code Series Title

GDP BY TYPE OF EXPENDITURE

EXPGDP Gross domestic product
EXPPC Private final consumption expenditure
EXPGC Government final consumption
EXPGF Gross fixed capital formation
EXPST Increase in stocks
EXPEXP Exports of goods and services
EXPIMP Imports of goods and services
EXPSD Residual item


COMPARATIVE VOLUME INDICES

CMPGDP Gross domestic product
CMPPC Private final consumption expenditure
CMPGC Government final consumption
CMPGF Gross fixed capital formation
CMPEXP Exports of goods and services
CMPIMP Imports of goods and services


Measure code
The measure code is made of the information contained in the three following elements.

* First element : valuation

C Current prices
VNB Constant prices, national base year
LNB Chained constant prices, national base year
VOB Constant prices, official OECD base year (1995)
DNB Implicit price deflator, national base year = 100
DOB Implicit price deflator expressed with 1995 = 100
VIXNB Volume index, national base year = 100
VIXOB Volume index expressed with 1995 = 100
CPC Current prices converted with current PPPs
VPC Current prices converted with 1995 PPPs
VPVOB Constant 1995 prices converted with 1995 PPPs

* Second element : level of the quarterly data

AR The quarterly data for a series are expressed at annual level
QR The quarterly data for a series are expressed at quarterly level

* Third element : seasonal adjustment

SA The quarterly series is seasonally adjusted

DATA AVAILABILITY FOR NON-MEMBER COUNTRIES

From January 2003, only data for the six major Non-Member countries (Brazil, China P.R., India, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa) are included and published in the MEI publication and related electronic version. However, all other Non-Member countries previously included in MEI are from January 2003 only available (free) on the OECD web-site (www.oecd.org) in a document entitled "Main Economic Indicators: Non-Member Countries". This document can be located by selecting directorates, statistics and statistics for Non-Member countries.

SEASONAL ADJUSTMENTS

New seasonal adjustments by OECD are generally carried out once a year,when the December figure is available. Revisions to individual series
due to new seasonal adjustments by national source or by OECD are not signalled in this note.

FOR FURTHER DETAILS

Detailed methodological information, updated with a delay of one month, is available on this CD-ROM in \doc\MetaCtr.htm or at http//www.oecd.org/std/mei

Questions relating to these database notes should be directed by e-mail to stat.contact@oecd