The Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) web area provides information on the annually published GERS report. GERS is compiled by statisticians and economists in the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser of the Scottish Government. The Scottish Government's Chief Statistician takes responsibility for this publication.
Latest publication
The latest publication of GERS, providing figures for financial year 2015-16, was published on 24 August 2016. The report is available at the links below:
The GERS 2015-16 tables in spreadsheet format can be downloaded at the following link
GERS 2015-16 Consultation and change to date of publication
The publication of GERS 2015-16 has been published 7 months earlier, in August 2016 rather than March 2017, in order to provide more timely estimates of Scotland's public sector finances. This follows efforts in previous years to reduce the time lag in publishing the report, and means that GERS is now published more than 10 months earlier than it was in 2012, and 16 months earlier than it was before 2008. Further information on the consultation process is available at the link below:
The UK Statistics Authority has confirmed that the release of GERS at this time is consistent with the requirements of the Code of Practice to release statistical reports as soon as they are judged ready, according to a published timetable that takes account of user needs, without being influenced by non-statistical matters. This helps ensure that there is no opportunity, or perception of opportunity, for the release to be withheld or delayed.
Common GERS queries
The Scottish Government receives a number of queries regarding the GERS data. In response to these, a new Frequently Asked Questions section has been introduced to the GERS summary.
In addition, the link below provides answers to earlier GERS queries.
National Statistics in GERS
GERS is an accredited National Statistic publication, which means that it has been independently assessed by the United Kingdom Statistics Authority as being produced in line with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics. Further information is available via the links below.