Abstract

This paper presents the results of an experimental exercise aimed at estimating Italy’s quarterly non-financial accounts for the general government, disaggregated by sub-sector (central government, local government and social security funds). This exercise was developed as part of a grant-funded European project designed to improve the availability and timeliness of public finance statistics. This initiative is an innovative development in official macroeconomic statistics, fully aligned with the methodological framework of the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010). In particular, the project incorporates quarterly general government sub-sector estimates into the national accounts system, ensuring comparability between countries and consistency with existing annual data. Both non-seasonally and seasonally adjusted time series are provided to enable analysis of fiscal trends and cyclical patterns throughout the year.
From a policy perspective, the availability of quarterly general government sub-sector data supports the needs for European fiscal governance, particularly in the context of the reformed fiscal rules and the implementation of the net expenditure indicator. These estimates improve the monitoring of real-time policy by providing decision-makers and analysts with timely and reliable data for assessing fiscal stances, analyzing expenditure dynamics and the compliance with medium-term budgetary objectives.
From a methodological perspective, the initiative improves the quality of government finance statistics (GFS) by producing reliable and analytically robust high-frequency, sub-sectoral fiscal data. Overall, this pilot exercise sets a benchmark for the development of future quarterly public finance accounts within the European Statistical System.
The present paper is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces ESA 2010 framework and Eurostat guidelines on quarterly estimation. Section 2 describes the data sources and the construction of the indicators by ESA aggregate. Section 3 presents new public finance indicators by sub-sectors, while Section 4 concludes.