The Fiji Bureau of Statistics has completed its rebasing of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) series to the year 2011. Data gathered from various sources was used to quantify the contribution of the various productive economic activities to GDP. GDP is the total market value of all final goods and services produced in a country in a given year and a rebase needs to be carried out at reasonable intervals of time to factor in structural changes taking place in the economy. The GDP will now be based on the structure of the economy in 2011.
NEW BASE
The compilation procedures were in accordance with the United Nations System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA 2008). The economic activities are classified according to the Fiji Standard Industrial Classification (FSIC) 2010 which is based on the International Standard Industrial Classification Revision 4. Data for the compilation work was sourced from administrative records, surveys and special studies conducted by the Fiji Bureau of Statistics.
NEW WEIGHTS
Industries have been assigned weights based on their contribution to the total net output of the economy in the base year. The total weight of the industries equals 100.0. Table 1 provides a comparison of the two base period weights for the various industries and their absolute change between 2008 and 2011. From Table 1 it can be noted that the Manufacturing Industry had the highest weight of 14.1 in 2011, which means it contributed 14.1 percent to the total net output of the economy in the 2011 base year.