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The British statistics agency on Friday acknowledged that even more of its figures were flawed as it banned the publication of two price indices used to help calculate GDP, deepening concerns about the reliability of the UK economic data.
The Office for National Statistics said it had found flaws in the price indices of manufacturer price and price manufacturer services, which give a sense of price pressures within business supply chains.
Issuing PPI and SPPI data, which were due to March 26, would stop “while we correct this issue,” the agency added.
The delay will foster questions on the reliability of the figures produced by the Inel, as the agency this month delayed the publication of commercial data with the one day notice.
He is also clashing with long problems in a major study of the state of labor market, which have left ministers and interest groups of the Bank of England without strong employment data since the end of 2023.
Rob Wood, the chief of economist in the United Kingdom at Pantheon Macroeconomics consulting, said the errors in the Ina data were “now becoming widespread … which should ask questions about how reliable all statistics are”.
With flaws in the labor market, trade and PPI, “there must be questions about which mistakes and other problems are interceiving that we have not discovered yet,” he added.
Problems with detailed price data – which are used to help calculate the size of the UK economy – can lead to reviews of estimates for services, production and construction, especially in 2022 and 2023, said Ons.
The impact of PPI and SPPI reviews on various industries “must be offset to some extent”, so “there would be no significant difference in the latest economic trends”, they said Ones, while warning that the issues with the figures date back to 2008.
The problem also affected how goods trade and service trade are regulated for inflation.
“Early analysis suggests that some export and import of goods from 2023 can be affected, and some export data before 2014,” Ons said, adding that he planned to resume publication during the summer.
Jonathan Portes, professor of economics and public politics at King’s College London, said PPI and SPPI mistakes were “undoubtedly unfortunate” but not “unusual”, given that Inel had presented a number of methodological changes over the use of deflators over time.
Ons said he did not expect any changes to the publication schedule for monthly, quarterly or annual GDP. He also said that the consumer price index and a wider inflation that includes housing costs, CPIH, were not “completely unaffected”.
Earlier on Friday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies Think-tank said that a major review by the agency in official private pension home estimates was “essential”, leaving policymakers without reliable guides on how the property is distributed among families.
