Scottish Annual Business Statistics 2020

Introduction

The Scottish Annual Business Statistics (SABS) data are sourced from the Annual Business Survey (ABS) conducted by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). It is important to note that overall growth rates associated with the ABS are not comparable to the official growth rates for the whole economy given that significant sectors of the economy are not included in the ABS and the results have not been balanced with other datasets. 

The estimate of aGVA represents the income (Turnover) of businesses, less the cost of goods and services consumed in the production process (Purchases). Data are in current prices (i.e. values have not been adjusted for inflation).

SABS measures the non-financial business economy. The industry sectors not covered in SABS are the financial sector and parts of the agriculture and public sector. The SABS statistics are best suited to the analysis of industry sectors rather than the economy as a whole. Industry sectors are defined according to the UK Standard Industrial Classification 2007 (SIC07). 

Revisions

Within SABS 2020 the latest results for 2020 are provisional and will be made final when they are re-published within SABS 2021 - at which point they may be revised due to late returns. The results for 2019, within SABS 2020, have been revised and are now final.

ABS Sample Design

The ABS sample is as a stratified random sample of UK businesses from the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR). The survey population or universe is stratified by industry, employment and country using the information from the IDBR. The sample selects all the largest businesses with a reducing fraction of smaller businesses. This method ensures the sample size is kept to a minimum. The ABS returns are grossed up to the register population, so that the estimates relate to all active businesses on the IDBR for the sectors covered.

Usually, the data for Scotland is based on ABS returns from around 8,000 businesses. However, the returns for 2019 and 2020 were lower at approximately 6,000 returns – this was because the COVID-19 pandemic made it more difficult to contact respondents in order to process survey returns. This means that the 2019 and 2020 estimates in this release are subject to more uncertainty than usual.