A look into Gastat GDP revision project: The General Authority for Statistics (Gastat) recently updated its nominal and real GDP historical data over 2011-2024, as part of a revision project that looks to better capture the economic transformation taking place in the Kingdom with more detailed insights over the performance of key sectors in the economy.

What changed? Gastat launched the revision project at the beginning of 2024, using updated survey data and new sources, including the comprehensive economic survey, the household income and expenditure survey, and the comprehensive agricultural survey. The authority also adopted a chain-linking method in line with global standards to provide more accurate real GDP growth estimates, assessing growth rates “based on the weights and prices of the year preceding the measurement year,” according to Gastat.

This resulted in the number of tracked economic activities jumping to 134, up from 85. The revision “better captures the ongoing economic transformation in the kingdom by expanding the economic activities covered and data sources,” S&P Global Ratings’ Zahabia Gupta told EnterpriseAM.

Saudi Arabia’s 2023 GDP was revised to be 14.1% higher than earlier estimates, which puts the economy’s size at SAR 4.5 tn, up from SAR 3.94 tn, according to Gastat‘s revised figures.

What this meant for the Kingdom’s revised GDP growth for 2024: “With these updates, nominal GDP is 14% higher for 2024, which mainly reflects improvements in the non-oil economy including construction, trade, hospitality, transport, and manufacturing. For real GDP, with the rebasing of the year to 2023, growth was revised to 1.8% for 2024, from 1.3% previously,” Gupta said.

By the numbers: The update shows that the non-oil sector now makes up 53.2% of GDP, a 5.7 percentage point increase from previous estimates, reflecting faster growth in construction, retail, transport, and services, as well as stronger contributions from small- and medium-sized enterprises, the authority said.

The sector breakdown: Construction saw the biggest upward revision, with activity rising 61%, followed by a 29.8% upward revision in wholesale, retail hospitality and restaurants, and a 25.6% boost in transport and communications. The revised numbers also show higher government and household spending than previously reported.

The updates could become a more regular occurrence as Gastat wrote that without regular updates to its data collection mechanisms, the statistics may “fail to reflect the ongoing transformation of Saudi Arabia’s economic structure, particularly in light of the rapid expansion of the non-oil sector.”

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