Supply And Use Tables

From Open Risk Manual

Definition

Supply And Use Tables (SUT) describe linkages in the whole economy by industry and by product.

The tables show links between components of GVA, industry inputs and outputs, and product supply and use. SUT tables are asymmetric tables (in contrast to product by product or industry by industry) symmetric tables. The SUTs link different institutional sectors of the economy (for example, non-financial corporations) together with details of imports and exports of goods and services, final consumption expenditure of government, household and non-profit institutions serving households (referred to as NPISHs), and capital formation.

Usage

In the context of a Supply And Use Framework these tables are used as inputs to construct the Input-Output tables. Supply and use tables link different institutional sectors of the economy (e.g. public corporations) together with detail of imports and exports of goods and services, government expenditure, household and NPISHs expenditure and capital formation.

Producing supply and use tables allows an examination of consistency and coherence of national accounts components within a single detailed framework and, by incorporating the components of the three approaches to measuring GDP (i.e. production, income and expenditure), enables a single estimate of GDP to be determined.

When balanced in an integrated manner, supply and use tables also provide coherence and consist- ency in linking the components of the following three accounts:

  • goods and services account;
  • production account (by industry and by institutional sector); and
  • generation of income account (by industry and by institutional sector).


Supply and use tables are a necessary first step in preparing input-output tables, but have important uses on their own, both analytically and as quality control tools. When supply and use tables are first prepared, they are unlikely to balance and until they are brought into balance, GDP measured from the production approach will differ from the expenditure measure of GDP. Only supply and use tables provide a sufficiently rigorous framework to eliminate discrepancies in the measured flows of goods and services throughout the economy to ensure the alternative measures of GDP converge to the same value.

References