GDP Growth Rate QoQ

GDP Growth Rate QoQ tracks the quarterly change in New Zealand real Gross Domestic Product versus the prior quarter. The headline is production GDP, value added across industries, in seasonally adjusted chain-volume terms, with price change removed. It covers the market value of goods and services produced in New Zealand during the quarter, after deducting intermediate consumption.

Stats NZ, the government statistics agency, compiles it within the quarterly national accounts. The quarterly series runs from the first quarter of 1987, with chain-volume measures from the June 1987 quarter. It is built from quarterly business surveys and administrative sources, with no single sample behind it. Sources include the Retail Trade Survey, the Economic Survey of Manufacturing, the Wholesale Trade Survey, building work, merchandise trade and price indexes.

It does not measure welfare, income or GDP per person. The income approach is not calculated quarterly for lack of suitable data, and the expenditure measure is more volatile and is not the QoQ headline.

Stats NZ publishes quarterly GDP within three months after the reference quarter ends. Releases land on Thursday at 10:45am New Zealand time, about 11 weeks after the quarter closes. Each release brings a media release plus an information release with industry and expenditure tables, charts and downloadable data. Each release also names the next release date.

Earlier quarters are revised in every release as fuller data arrive, as when the December 2022 fall moved from 0.6% to 0.7%. Balanced annual supply-and-use data enter once a year in the September quarter release published in December. A rise means expansion and a fall means contraction, with no threshold or target band. Two straight falls read as technical recession by market convention, not by the publisher, while a high reading reads as bullish for the dollar.

Production GDP sums value added across 16 industries plus five expenditure components. The main groups are:

• Agriculture, forestry and fishing: quarterly value added reconciled to annual totals through gross output.
• Manufacturing: tracked through the Economic Survey of Manufacturing and related output indicators.
• Construction: work put in place: residential, other private, public, heavy and civil.
• Business services, rental and real estate: includes computer system design plus hiring and property services.
• Transport, retail, hospitality, health and media: freight and passenger movement, shops, restaurants, lodging, care and telecoms.
• Expenditure: household and government consumption, gross fixed capital formation, inventory change, and exports minus imports.

The March 2023 quarter, released 15 June 2023, fell 0.1% after the December 2022 quarter fell 0.7%, so media called a recession. The December print had been revised from 0.6% to 0.7%, so first prints are not final. Business services fell 3.5% and transport, postal and warehousing fell 2.2%, while information media and telecommunications rose 2.7%. Cyclone Gabrielle and floods framed the release after 12 straight rate rises to 5.5%, while the full year still grew 2.9%.

1. Value added: for each industry, value added equals gross output minus intermediate consumption, weighted by previous year prices in a Laspeyres volume index.
2. Chain-linking: yearly movements are chained into a continuous series in reference year prices such as average 2009/10 prices, with weights updated every year.
3. Annual benchmarking: quarterly series are reconciled to balanced annual supply-and-use totals once a year in the September quarter release published in December.
4. Seasonal adjustment: the headline production series is adjusted to remove seasonal variation and reveal trend and irregular components.
5. Growth rate: the QoQ rate is 100 times the change in seasonally adjusted chain-volume GDP divided by prior quarter GDP. As an illustration, GDP of 58,668 versus 58,200 gives growth of 0.8%. Expenditure GDP equals private plus government consumption plus inventory change plus capital formation plus exports minus imports.