Glossary:Changes in inventories

From Statistics Explained

Changes in inventories (or stocks) is the difference between additions to and withdrawals from inventories. In national accounts they consist of changes in:

• stocks of outputs that are still held by the units that produced them prior to their being further processed, sold, delivered to other units or used in other ways;
• stocks of products acquired from other units that are intended to be used later for intermediate consumption or for resale without further processing;
• work in progress, which are goods being processed but not yet delivered to the user at the end of the accounting period;
• strategic stocks managed by government authorities (food, oil, stocks for market intervention).

In the national accounts changes in inventories are shown as a change in assets in the capital account.

Sources

• United Nations: "System of National Accounts (SNA) 1993", United Nations, New York, 1993, §§ 10.7 and 10.28
• Eurostat: European System of Accounts - ESA 1995, §§ 3.117-3.119, Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, Luxembourg, 1996

Related concepts

• Gross capital formation

Statistical data

• National accounts – GDP