Quarterly sector accounts, UK: January to March 2021

Detailed estimates of quarterly sector accounts that can be found in the UK Economic Accounts (UKEA).

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Contact:
Email David Matthewson

Release date:
30 June 2021

Next release:
30 September 2021

1. Main points

  • The UK’s net borrowing position with the rest of the world reduced to 2.5% of nominal gross domestic product (GDP) in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2021 compared with 5% of nominal GDP in Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2020.

  • The household saving ratio increased to 19.9% in Quarter 1 2021, which is the second highest on record, compared with 16.1% in Quarter 4 2020.

  • The net lending position of households in the non-financial account increased to £57.3 billion (10.6% of nominal GDP) in Quarter 1 2021 from £38.9 billion in Quarter 4 2020 (7.1% of nominal GDP); the increased lending was driven by a further fall in household spending of 3.2% from the previous quarter.

  • Non-financial corporations reduced their net borrowing position in the non-financial account to £3.0 billion in Quarter 1 2021 (0.6% of nominal GDP) from £6.0 billion in Quarter 4 2020 (1.1% of nominal GDP); within non-financial corporations, private non-financial corporations increased dividend payments made by 23.8% on the quarter.

  • General government increased their net borrowing position in the non-financial account to £72.2 billion in Quarter 1 2021 (13.3% of nominal GDP) from £59.7 billion in Quarter 4 2020 (11.0% of nominal GDP); this higher borrowing was driven by increased final consumption expenditure of 2.8% on the quarter while net property income fell substantially.

  • In the financial account, households extended their net lending position while general government reduced their net borrowing position; financial and non-financial corporations increased their net borrowing position.
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2. Quarterly sector accounts data

Quarterly sector accounts time series
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Quarterly aggregate economic indicators and summary estimates for private non-financial corporations and households’ sectors of the UK economy, and revisions.

UK Economic Accounts
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Quarterly estimates of national product, income and expenditure, sector accounts and balance of payments.

UK Economic Accounts: main aggregates
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Quarterly national accounts aggregates, per capita data, including gross domestic product by income and expenditure, gross value added, gross fixed capital formation, change in inventories, gross operating surplus and revisions.

UK Economic Accounts: total economy
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Distribution and use of income account and capital account, financial account and balance sheet quarterly data for the UK total economy.

UK Economic Accounts: flow of funds
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Quarterly flow of funds, financial account and balance sheet data for the UK economy by institutional sector.

UK Economic Accounts: institutional sector - general government
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Distribution and use of income account and capital account, financial account and balance sheet quarterly data for general government.

UK Economic Accounts: institutional sector - households and non-profit institutions serving households
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Distribution and use of income account and capital account, financial account and balance sheet quarterly data for households and non-profit institutions serving households. Includes the Experimental Statistics on the impact of removing "imputed" transactions from real household disposable income and the saving ratio to better represent the economic experience of UK households.

UK Economic Accounts: institutional sector – financial and non-financial corporations
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Distribution and use of income account and capital account, financial account and balance sheet quarterly data for non-financial corporations and sub-sectors.

UK Economic Accounts: institutional sector - rest of the world
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Distribution and use of income account and capital account, financial account and balance sheet quarterly data for the rest of the world.

UK Economic Accounts: balance of payments - current account
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Quarterly transactions in trade in goods and services, primary, secondary and investment income, transactions with EU and non-EU countries and capital account.

UK Economic Accounts: balance of payments - financial account
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Quarterly transactions associated with changes of ownership of the UK's foreign financial assets and liabilities, including direct, portfolio and other investment, sector analysis and government reserve assets.

UK Economic Accounts: balance of payments – international investment position
Dataset | Released 30 June 2021
Quarterly end-of-period balance sheet levels of UK external assets and liabilities, including direct, portfolio and other investment, sector analysis and government reserve assets.

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3. Measuring the data

Revisions within this release

This bulletin includes new data for the latest available quarter, Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2021 only.

This bulletin follows the National Accounts Revisions Policy.

Understanding the sector and financial accounts

This release presents analysis on UK aggregate data for the main economic indicators and summary estimates from the institutional sectors of the UK economy that are presented in the UK Economic Accounts (UKEA) dataset:

  • public corporations

  • private non-financial corporations

  • financial corporations

  • households

  • non-profit institutions serving households (NPISH)

  • central government

  • local government

  • rest of the world

This release uses data from the UKEA and provides detailed estimates of national product, income and expenditure, UK sector, non-financial and financial accounts, and UK Balance of Payments. These accounts are the underlying data that produce a single estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) using income, production and expenditure data.

Quality and Methodology Information report

The Quarterly sector accounts Quality and Methodology Information report contains important information on:

  • the strengths and limitations of the data and how it compares with related data

  • uses and users of the data

  • how the output was created

  • the quality of the output including the accuracy of the data

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5. Glossary

Seasonal adjustment

All figures given in this bulletin are adjusted for seasonality, unless the financial accounts are under discussion or otherwise stated. Seasonal adjustment removes seasonal or calendar effects from data to enable more meaningful comparisons over time.

Current price

Current price series are expressed in terms of the prices during the time period being estimated. These describe the prices recorded at the time of production or consumption and include the effect of price inflation over time.

Chained volume measures

Chained volume series (also known as real terms) have had the effects of inflation removed.

Gross disposable household income (GDHI) and real household disposable income (RHDI)

Gross disposable household income (GDHI) is the estimate of the total amount of income that households have available to either spend, save or invest including income received from wages (and the self-employed), social benefits, pensions and net property income (that is, earnings from interest on savings and dividends from shares) less taxes on income and wealth.

Adjusting GDHI to remove the effects of inflation gives real household disposable income (RHDI). This is a measure of the real purchasing power of households’ income, in terms of the physical quantity of goods and services they would be able to purchase if prices remained constant over time.

The households’ saving ratio explained

The saving ratio estimates the amount of money households have available to save as a percentage of their gross disposable income plus pension accumulations.

Net lending or borrowing

The net lending of a sector represents the surplus resources that a sector makes available to other sectors, net borrowing represents their financing of a deficit from other sectors.

Net lending means a sector has money left over after its spending and investment in a given period, whereas net borrowing means it has spent and invested more than it received and has a need for financing, which may be covered by borrowing, issuing shares or bonds, or by drawing on reserves.

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Contact details for this Statistical bulletin

David Matthewson
sector.accounts@ons.gov.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 1633 456366