UK ONS Q2 National Accounts data includes GDP revisions from 1997 till Q2 15

UK ONS has already published a series of articles which give the reasons for the revisions to GDP. It has also released the near-final data for the years up to and including 2013. 

The ONS will publish on 30 September the Q2 National Accounts which will include substantial revisions to GDP from 1997 to the second quarter of this year. These are the result of improvements to incorporate methodological and other changes.

The breakdown shows revisions across all the major components with no regular pattern. However, in aggregate, the picture appears less random in recent years. GDP growth for 2011 to 2013 has been revised up by 0.4pp or 0.5 pp per year. Over the same period, qoq growth rates have been revised by between 0 and 0.3pp with an average of 0.14pp.

These data are unlikely to be revised in the 30 September release. The interest will lie in the new data for 2014 and the first two quarters of 2015. 

"The range of annual and quarter pp revisions over 1998 to 2013 is -1.0 to +0.5 and -0.5 to +0.4 respectively, so the revisions for 2014 and 2015 should not be assumed that they will automatically follow the strong positive numbers seen since 2011 but the risks are skewed in that direction", says Societe Generale.