New Zealand GDP grew faster in March year, data revisions show
NEW Zealand’s economy grew significantly more than previously reported in the year to March 2024, according to revised data drawn from the national accounts.
Gross domestic product in the 12 months to March 2024 increased 1.4 per cent from the year-earlier period, Statistics New Zealand said on Wednesday (Nov 27) in Wellington. That’s up from previously reported annual average growth of just 0.3 per cent.
The revisions reveal much stronger growth in farming, forestry and fishing as well as in business services and health care in the March year. It shows construction grew slightly rather than contracting as previously reported.
The national accounts provide balanced annual data across all industries for the March 2023 year, allowing for a better starting point and also allowing the weighting between industries to be updated to better reflect structural changes in the economy, the statistics agency said. The revisions also reflect improved data sources, it said.
The new series has a lower weighting for primary industries and a higher weight for construction. Services remains the biggest component of GDP at 67.6 per cent, while goods production makes up 18.8 per cent.
Statistics New Zealand will report third-quarter GDP data on Dec 19. It said that the report will also include new seasonal adjustment methodology that will improve accuracy and provide a more appropriate treatment of pandemic-period volatility.
Most local economists provisionally expect GDP fell slightly in the third quarter following a 0.2 per cent contraction in the three months to June, putting the economy in recession.
The biggest differences will be observed in the pandemic-affected periods – from the first quarter of 2020 to the third quarter of 2022 – but also to the most recent quarters, the agency said. Some data series will be revised entirely.
“While seasonally adjusted data is revised with each new quarter of data, these method changes will cause larger than normal revisions to the seasonally adjusted series in the September quarter release,” the agency said. “Some quarters within a year will show stronger growth than previously published, while others will show weaker growth.” BLOOMBERG
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