National accounts (income and expenditure) provides information on domestic production and the resulting income that is available for spending and saving. It also provides an insight into how saving is used and invested between different sectors of the economy.
Estimates updated
The National accounts (income and expenditure): Year ended March 2025 release provides updated estimates, up to and including the year ended March 2024. The exceptions to this are the gross fixed capital formation and capital stocks tables, which provide provisional estimates for the March 2025 year. Estimates beyond March 2024 are included in the quarterly National accounts (income, savings, assets and liabilities) release, which will next be published on 15 January 2026. Provisional data for the household sector has been incorporated in this release annually since National accounts (income, saving, assets, and liabilities): September 2022 quarter.
The January 2026 release will integrate these new annual estimates up to March 2024 as benchmarks, and provide a consistent time series through to the September 2025 quarter. This includes provisional annual estimates for the March 2025 year.
Pre-existing March 2025 annual values for some series, which are shared with the gross domestic product release, have been suppressed in Infoshare to prevent time-series discontinuities. These series have been updated to March 2024 with this release.
Updated March 2025 annual values will be available with Gross domestic product: September 2025 quarter, to be published on 18 December 2025.
Each year, Stats NZ also updates the annual national accounts. Data updates occur when:
- new or more timely information has become available
- new methods or data sources are introduced
- existing methods or data sources are updated.
Updates to New Zealand's annual national accounts reflect the availability of new information from underlying data sources, such as tax data and detailed financial data from the Annual Enterprise Survey. These updates are incorporated into higher-frequency measures such as quarterly gross domestic product, resulting in updates to previously published statistics. Quarterly data is revised to match the new annual numbers (a process known as benchmarking).
Effects of updates on household saving
Following the incorporation of more comprehensive annual data sources, household saving for the year ended March 2024 was revised up by $6.1 billion, from -$3.7 billion in original estimates to $2.4 billion.
| Year ended March | Previously published | Revised |
| 2016 | -2495 | -1998 |
| 2017 | -2722 | -2337 |
| 2018 | -3286 | -2853 |
| 2019 | -2189 | -1835 |
| 2020 | 2584 | 2322 |
| 2021 | 15098 | 14961 |
| 2022 | 5109 | 5135 |
| 2023 | -6475 | -4807 |
| 2024 | -3675 | 2428 |
Household saving is the difference between the household sector's disposable income and expenditure. Negative saving means households spent more than their disposable income, while positive saving means households spent less.
The national accounts group the components of disposable income into four main groups of income payable and receivable, as well as making adjustments for the consumption of fixed capital and the change in net equity in pension funds. Revisions to the disposable income and final consumption expenditure components can have offsetting impacts on household saving, with the revision to household saving being the balance of these revisions. The graph below shows the differences over time between the initial provisional estimate for the year and the first time it is revised.
| Year ended March | Total primary income receivable | Total secondary income receivable | Total primary income payable | Total secondary income payable | Adjustment for change in net equity of pension funds | Consumption of fixed capital | Final consumption expenditure |
| 2016 | 3415 | 949 | 16 | -943 | 0 | 4 | -2200 |
| 2017 | 4838 | 78 | 0 | -262 | 340 | 2 | -715 |
| 2018 | 2869 | -1953 | 321 | 1607 | 13 | 34 | -914 |
| 2019 | 5102 | 204 | 0 | 204 | -4 | -14 | -4056 |
| 2020 | 3480 | 542 | -228 | 69 | -5 | 2 | 757 |
| 2021 | 3691 | 1192 | 24 | 710 | -985 | -2 | 1767 |
| 2022 | 547 | -1008 | 394 | 2035 | -2198 | 17 | -1169 |
| 2023 | -3963 | -415 | 1009 | -197 | -283 | 6 | -2126 |
| 2024 | 3291 | 1849 | 4 | -465 | -1 | 47 | 1378 |
In the year ended March 2024 revision, five out of seven components contributed to an upward revision in household saving. As a result, the revision to household saving was one of the larger revisions in recent years, despite the revisions to individual components being of a similar size to previous years.
Revisions to household saving flows from, and are impacted by, various national accounts releases. For example, revisions to total primary income receivable came from balance of payments and international investment position, national accounts (industry production and investment), and national accounts (income and expenditure). Revisions to total secondary income receivable came from national accounts (income and expenditure).
2025 preview of national accounts improvements and updates has more information on the data improvements and updates being made as part of this year's cycle of New Zealand's annual national accounts.
Data suppression − net non-life insurance premiums
We calculate total non-life insurance premiums received by insurers, then allocate the payments of those premiums to household, government, and financial sectors.
While most sector payments are calculated from relevant data, the estimate for the non-financial business enterprises sector is the residual of non-life premiums paid that have not been allocated to other sectors.
For the year ended March 2023, we have suppressed the net non-life insurance premiums by non-financial business enterprises series, due to data quality concerns.
More data
Use Infoshare to access national accounts time series.
Subject category: Economic indicators
Group: National accounts (for consolidated accounts)
Group: Institutional sector accounts (for sector accounts data)
Definitions and metadata
National accounts (income and expenditure): Year ended March 2025 - DataInfo+ gives information on improvements and revisions made in this release.
National accounts (income and expenditure): general information - DataInfo+ gives general information about this release, and other information on the data and tables.
National accounts (income and expenditure): total concepts - DataInfo+ gives definitions of terms used in this release.
Annual national accounts sources and methods gives information on the data and methods used to compile the National accounts (industry production and investment) and National accounts (income and expenditure) releases.
Technical enquiries
Brigitte Neal
04 931 4600
[email protected]
ISSN 2537-8023
Next release
National accounts (income and expenditure): Year ended March 2026 will be released in November 2026
