Description

The objective of the national accounts is to describe the most relevant characteristics of the Spanish economy and its institutional sectors and activity branches. To ascertain the evolution of the macroeconomic groups the National Statistics Institute publishes the national accounts of Spain and the quarterly national accounts.

Spanish National Accounts (NAS)

The NAS uses the set of basic short term or structural statistical information offered by the statistical system. Data arising from the different sources are dealt with and arbitrated in a unique accounting framework. As statistical information is enlarged and the accounting framework is broken down, national accountants revise the estimates obtained. The estimates from each year undergo three revisions until they are considered definite.

The NAS has been elaborated annually since 1967. As of May 19, 2005 the CNE began to be developed in the framework of the 2000 accounting basis methodological developments (the assignment of Financial Intermediation Services Indirectly Measured, FISIM, to sectors and branches users of these services) and important statistical changes, such as the incorporation of data from the Population and Housing Census 2001.

Beginning in October 2011, the SNA has been compiled in base 2008. This base change introduced, as the main methodological innovations, the adoption of the new classifications of activities and products passed at the heart of the European Union, and the estimation of investment in fixed capital, considering a new classification of assets, rather than by products, as it was previously compiled.

Moreover, Base 2008 introduced statistical changes, modifying the sources of statistical information and the estimation methods of the accounting aggregates, for the purpose of improving the quality of the estimated data. The statistical changes incorporated referred to the preparation of the intermediate demand matrix of the economy, the accounts of the Public Administrations, the accounts of the Rest of the World, the Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISH), the improvement in the final balances of the financial and non-financial accounts of the Spanish economy, and the computation of Fixed Capital Consumption.

Quarterly National Accounts (QNA)

The QNA has as its main objective the provision of a coherent quantitative description of the totality of economic activity, within a quarterly macroeconomic framework, elaborated from a supply, demand and primary income viewpoint. The QNA is adjusted to the same principles of accounting coherence and equilibrium as the annual National Accounts.

Since November 2011, the QNA will be elaborated in the framework of the new accounting series base 2008.