This page contains information on Guernsey's economic output, measured by the Gross Value Added (GVA) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
- Guernsey's total GDP for 2019 is estimated at £3,252 million, which is 2.6% higher than the estimate for 2018 in nominal terms (current prices).
- Guernsey GDP per capita in 2019 is £51,868; 56% greater than in the UK in 2018 and 14% greater than Jersey GVA per capita in 2019.
- The finance sector remains the largest single sector, accounting for 40% of the total GVA (£1,280 million) or 44% of Factor Income in 2019. GVA is the total for all sectors including the household sector. Factor Income is the total for all industry sectors excluding the household sector. There is more information in the methodology section below on how GDP relates to GVA.
Methodology
- GVA, is calculated as the sum of:
- Compensation of employees (which includes remuneration in the form of wages paid to employees plus estimates of pension and social security contributions paid on their behalf by their employer)
- Gross operating surplus (which is equated to company trading profits and public sector trading body surpluses)
- Mixed income (the remuneration and profits of sole traders)
- Income of households (rental income and owner occupied imputed rents, net of maintenance costs and borrowing costs)
- The sum of these elements gives the GVA for each sector:
- Agriculture, horticulture, fishing and quarrying
- Manufacturing
- Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply
- Water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities
- Construction
- Wholesale, retail and repairs
- Hostelry
- Transport and storage
- Information and communication
- Finance
- Real estate activities
- Professional, business, scientific and technical activities
- Administrative and support service activities
- Public administration and trading bodies
- Education
- Human health, social and charitable work activities
- Arts, entertainment and recreation
- Other service activities
- Households
- (If the households sector is excluded, then this is known as Factor Income, rather than GVA).
- To calculate GDP, taxes on products are added and subsidies on products are deducted from the total GVA figure.
- The income approach method used in Guernsey was revised in 2017, to better align it with the international standard defined by the United Nations.The revised method was audited by Gross Domestic Product statisticians from the Office for National Statistics. They confirmed that the revised methodology represented "a significant improvement in data quality", but that "the use of only the income approach to measuring GDP will always leave further room for improvements".
- As a result, the Data and Analysis team plan to investigate the feasibility and costs of introducing a second (output) approach as well as introducing working on some further improvements to the income approach.
- The first step was the enactment of the Economic Statistics (Guernsey and Alderney) Law, 2019, which was approved in April 2020 and put into practice in September 2020. The legislation provides a gateway for the controlled sharing of some data provided to the States of Guernsey for Income Tax purposes with the Data & Analysis team, so it can be used for the purpose of providing economic statistics, such as GVA and GDP. The next step will involve the Data & Analysis team collecting additional data directly from businesses.
- If you are interested in being involved in this design of this process or would like any further information, please contact dataandanalysis@gov.gg.
See the provisional release date list [156kb] to find out when the next bulletin is due to be published. The publication of the first estimates of 2019 GVA and GDP will be later in 2020 than originally planned to enable some of the methodological updates described in the section above to be implemented prior to the publication of 2019 first estimates.
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Follow this link to access the archive of GDP and GVA bulletins