This report presents an overview and Q1 2025 results of the Quarterly National Accounts from the Production Approach (Production QNA), published by the Economic and Social Research Institute of the Cabinet Office.
Production QNA is an initiative to convert annually published value-added by economic activity (industry) into quarterly data and estimate it for preliminary periods. Based on the "Basic Plan for the Development of Official Statistics," it was developed following deliberations by the Statistics Commission and has been published as a reference series since July 2022.
The estimation method employs an improved single-indicator approach. Specifically, goods and services output obtained from the estimation process of quarterly GDP estimates (2nd QE) is converted to output by economic activity using the V-table (economic activity-specific goods and services output table) from annual estimates. After deflation, real value-added is estimated by multiplying by the value-added ratio obtained from the U-table. Additionally, adjustments are made with reference to the Supply and Use Tables (SUT) balancing method to more precisely capture changes in quarterly input structures.
The main feature of Production QNA is providing quarterly output and value-added by economic activity (industry). Publication timing is within four months after the quarter ends (within one month after 2nd QE publication), with data classified into 16 economic activities from agriculture, forestry and fisheries to various service industries.
The article demonstrates that Production QNA is an important statistic for understanding Japan's production-side economic trends on a quarterly basis, providing a useful tool for analyzing economic activity from a different perspective than expenditure-side QE.