A change of reference year for annual regional aggregates in national accounts

Abstract

Changes of base or reference year in countries’ systems of national accounts are a normal part of statistical work. They are an opportunity to incorporate into measurements, for the base year and those that follow or precede it, all the progress in concepts, methodologies and information sources that has occurred since the last estimate of gross domestic product (GDP). The System of National Accounts 2008 (2008 SNA) recommends that this type of updating be carried out at least every five years to reflect the current behaviour of the different economic sectors, thereby providing better tools for decision-making and economic policymaking. International organizations, for their part, must reflect these changes in a reliable and timely manner. Accordingly, the Statistics Division has proceeded to update the reference year in its calculations of regional aggregates in this area. ECLAC has been presenting information on regional aggregates of national accounts with reference year 2010 since 2014. This reference year lies a long way in the past and does not fully reflect the relative shares of the countries in these aggregates.