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Transport satellite account

Australian System of National Accounts: Concepts, Sources and Methods
Reference period
2020-21 financial year

23.54    The experimental Australian Transport Economic Account (ATEA) released in 2018 covered the period 2010-11 to 2015-16 and presented information on the contribution of transport activity across all industries of the Australian economy.

23.55    For the purposes of the ATEA, total transport activity is the movement of people or goods from one location to another and is comprised of:

  • For-hire transport activity, which is that activity undertaken on a fee for-hire basis in the Australian and New Zealand Standard industrial Classification, 2006 (ANZSIC) Division I - Transport, postal and warehousing. This corresponds with transport as it is viewed in the national accounts.
  • In-house transport activity within the four primary modes of transport – Road, Rail, Air and Water as defined in the ANZSIC Divisions 46 to 49.
    • The majority of this activity is own-account (or ‘ancillary’) output, which is not intended for market, and is consumed in the production of the industry’s primary output for example a retail business using its own truck to deliver goods from a warehouse to the retail outlet.
    • In-house transport in this account also encompasses any secondary production of transport activity for market, outside of Division I.
    • The In-house production of transport services in scope of the ATEA is restricted to the movement of people or freight that could potentially be outsourced to transport units in ANZSIC Division I. As such, Transport activity that cannot be disentangled from the primary production process of the unit is considered out of scope of the ATEA. However, there is no practical way to separately identify this activity, and it is likely that estimates include activity such as that of waste collection services and police and emergency services patrols.

23.56    To maintain links to the national accounts, transport services provided by households for their own use are not in scope of the ATEA.

Assumptions

23.57    The ATEA draws on existing datasets that were not designed for the purpose of an ATEA, and therefore a number of underlying assumptions have been made, which should be considered in interpreting results. These include the following:

  • For each mode of transport, non-transport industries are assumed to exhibit the same input structure and production function of the Division I industry. For example, In-house Road Transport is assumed to have the same structure as that of the Road transport industry in Division I.
  • All economic activity within Division I is assumed to be For-hire transport. No adjustments are made to exclude secondary activity undertaken within that industry that is not related to the provision of transport services.
  • Division I products have not been used as an input to the In-House Transport industry, as it is assumed these activities will be captured within Division I.
  • Extrapolation of the time series from base year data assumes that the relative use of in-house transport products remains constant over time.

International standards

23.58    There are currently no international standards or guidelines for developing a Transport Satellite Account, although their development is currently being considered by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The methodology for the ATEA therefore closely followed that of the United States and Canadian accounts, with some variation due to differences in available data sources.

Methodology

23.59    The supply and use tables for the Australian economy provide the framework in which transport activity across the economy can be identified. Moreover, they provide the means of calculating transport gross value added (GVA) and gross domestic product (GDP).

23.60    In broad terms, the ATEA involves reorganising the information in the supply and use tables in a way that is consistent with the ASNA framework and respects the same industries and classifications. In doing so, the ATEA introduces four new In-house transport industries within the supply and use framework – one for each of the four primary modes of transport: Road, Rail, Air and Water.

23.61    The supply of each of these new industries is compiled by identifying the inputs, both intermediate and primary, used in the production of In-house transport by non-transport industries. Each of these new industries only produces a single output, which is In-house transport relating to the specific mode.

23.62    These new In-house transport industries thus explicitly capture supply and use relating to In-house transport activity.

Identifying and calculating transport-related inputs

23.63    Estimates of inputs used in the production of In-house transport are identified from the supply-use tables in three components:

  • Transport related inputs (TRIs) such as fuel, insurance and repairs, are inputs considered essential to transport activity. In the main, these inputs are used solely in the production of transport. An exception is fuel products, which have significant use for other purposes, such as the running of plant and machinery.
  • Non-transport related inputs (NTRIs) are other intermediate inputs which are used in the production of In-house transport, but are not specific to transport. These may include inputs such as accounting services and office supplies.
  • Primary inputs (value added components) include compensation of employees, gross operating surplus, and other net taxes on production.

23.64    For the ATEA, the new In-house transport industries are assumed to use the same input structures as those used in producing For-hire transport. NTRIs are imputed based on the ratios of TRI to NTRI in the corresponding For-hire industry, recognising that input structures vary between modes of transport produced.

23.65    Primary inputs, or value-added components of In-house transport, are calculated using the ratio of each value-added input to total intermediate inputs of the corresponding For-hire transport industry. Value-added components.

Taxes and subsidies

23.66    To complete the picture of transport's contribution to the economy, an estimate of taxes less subsidies on products is required. However, no such adjustment is necessary for In-house transport, as the input-based approach to measurement ensures its supply and use are already valued consistently. In principle, some net taxes on products for secondary production of transport within In-House transport is payable, however it has not been estimated in this account due to its relative insignificance.

23.67    Taxes and subsidies on any products produced by the For-Hire industries are allocated based on the contribution of each industry to the output of that product. For example, the ‘Rail transport’ industry (ANZSIC subdivision 47) is the sole producer of the product ‘Rail passenger transport services’, so the full values for both taxes and subsidies on this product are allocated to this industry.

Secondary transport production and margins

23.68    In-house transport activity comprises of three distinct components:

  • In-house transport activity for own use (ancillary production);
  • In-house transport supplied to another institutional unit (secondary production); and
  • Transport margins.

23.69    As In-house transport estimates in the ATEA have been built up from inputs related to transport activity, they represent all In-house transport activity, regardless of whether it has been supplied to another institutional unit or not. However, where transport activity is undertaken as secondary production, and services have been supplied to another institutional unit, output relating to this activity will already be captured in the supply and use tables. Thus, In-house transport output would be overstated with the introduction of the new transport products.

23.70    To prevent this overstatement, existing secondary production of transport services and transport margins are removed from the industries in which the activity occurred.

23.71    On the use side, an adjustment is also made to shift the total value of the transport margins to each of the new In-house transport products – Road, Rail, Air and Water.

Data sources

Economic Activity Survey

23.72    The Economic Activity Survey (EAS) produces estimates of the economic and financial performance of Australian industry, with the purpose of feeding into the National Accounts and several publications, specifically Australian Industry. These data have been incorporated in the ATEA to inform industry use of transport by mode, and transport specific use of fuel.

Supply-Use tables (2010-11 through 2015-16)

23.73    This experimental account has been compiled using SU tables, as incorporated in Australian System of National Accounts, 2016-17.

23.74    Employment and productivity relating to transport have been derived from both the Labour Force Statistics and Labour Account Statistics.