System of National Accounts (SNA)

The System of National Accounts (SNA 2008) is the external statistical standard IRES draws on to define the principal/secondary/ancillary activity distinction that underpins the definition of energy industries. Box 5.1 quotes SNA 2008 directly:

• Principal activity — the activity of a producer unit whose value added exceeds that of any other activity carried out within the same unit (SNA 2008, para. 5.8).
• Secondary activity — an activity carried out within a single producer unit in addition to the principal activity, whose output, like that of the principal activity, must be suitable for delivery outside the producer unit; its value added must be less than that of the principal activity by definition (SNA 2008, para. 5.9).
• Ancillary activity — an activity incidental to the main activity of an enterprise, facilitating the enterprise’s efficient running without normally resulting in goods/services that can be marketed (SNA 2008, para. 5.10).

[IRES, Ch. V, Box 5.1, PDF p. 72, 2018, citing System of National Accounts 2008]

This principal-activity test is exactly the test IRES uses to distinguish energy industries (principal activity is energy production/transformation/distribution) from other energy producers (energy production/transformation/distribution is secondary or ancillary) [IRES, Ch. V, paras 5.23, 5.75, PDF pp. 71, 77, 2018].

Role in Chapter VI

Chapter VI’s economic performance data items section states that its data items “are closely linked with the concepts, definitions and methods of the System of National Accounts 2008 (SNA 2008)” [IRES, Ch. VI, para. 6.73, PDF p. 96, 2018]. In particular, Chapter VI’s consumer prices data item is defined as SNA 2008’s purchasers’ prices (SNA 2008, para. 14.46) — the amount actually paid by the purchaser — and IRES gives the derivation chain from purchasers’ prices down to producers’ prices and basic prices in full [IRES, Ch. VI, para. 6.75, PDF pp. 96–97, 2018]. IRES also recommends that countries value gross output at basic prices “to maintain consistency with the valuation principles for output (production) of other international recommendations on business statistics and national accounts” [IRES, Ch. VI, para. 6.84, PDF p. 97, 2018] — recommendations tracker row VI/6.84. Chapter VI’s household statistical-unit definition also draws on SNA 2008, para. 4.149 [IRES, Ch. VI, para. 6.12, footnote 52, PDF p. 86, 2018] — see Statistical Units. Full detail on Economic Performance Data Items.

confidence: medium — this page currently covers SNA’s role as the source of Box 5.1’s activity-classification definitions (Ch. V) and the price/output valuation chain and household definition (Ch. VI); SNA’s broader scope, governance and relationship to energy accounts are not yet drawn from the source and may be expanded once a chapter that treats SNA more directly (e.g. Chapter XI on SEEA-Energy and its relationship to the SNA) is ingested.

Related

• IRES Chapter V — Energy Flows — the Chapter V digest this page supports
• IRES Chapter VI — Statistical Units and Data Items — the Chapter VI digest this page supports
• Energy Industries — the concept whose principal-activity test Box 5.1 grounds in SNA 2008
• Economic Performance Data Items — the Chapter VI section built on SNA 2008’s price and output-valuation concepts
• Statistical Units — the household definition (SNA 2008, para. 4.149) this standard also supplies
• International Recommendations for Energy Statistics — IRES, which cites SNA 2008 for these definitional boundaries
• International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities — ISIC Rev. 4, the activity classification SNA’s own principal/secondary/ ancillary activity concepts (Box 5.1) are applied through in energy statistics (Table 5.1, the kind-of-activity characteristic)