Revisions to the way business investment in software is measured will instantly boost figures for economic output, business investment, and prosperity, lifting Britain‘s position in international economic league tables.
The changes will raise gross domestic product by 1 per cent — more than half the level of economic growth last year — and revise annual growth rates upwards by close to 0.1 per cent for all years since 1992.
China recently overtook the UK as the fourth largest economy in the world, but history may even show the UK held its position a little longer than had been thought.
英国国家统计局(Office for National Statistics)表示,一家公司开发的软件的价值将是原先设想的5倍。该机构称,其对2003年英国软件产业投资的预估值可能要从25亿英镑上调至130亿英镑。
The Office for National Statistics said the value of software developed within a company would be five times higher than had been thought. The ONS said its estimate for such investment in 2003 was likely to rise from £2.5bn to £13bn.
伦敦经济学院(London School of Economics) 经济表现中心(Centre for Economic Performance)的资深专家尼古拉斯?奥尔顿(Nicholas Oulton)称,长期以来,人们对于英国软件投资的低水平数据感到困惑:“英国软件投资有些奇怪,它与电脑购买量数据的联系并不紧密,而两者之间本应存在相互联系。”
Nicholas Oulton, a senior fellow at the Centre for Economic Performance and the London School of Economics, said there had long been a puzzle over the UK‘s low recorded levels of software investment: “There was something odd about UK software, it didn’t relate well to the recorded purchases of computers, and you would expect the two to be related.”
经济产出数据的提高将在许多方面迅速改善英国经济的面貌。
Higher levels of measured output will give an immediate boost on many fronts to the chancellor.
It will improve the UK‘s relative position in the league tables for prosperity; boost measured productivity; show business investment to be considerably higher than thought; and lower the recorded burden of tax and public expenditure in GDP.
The results will put the UK‘s total software investment on par with other countries and show that UK in-house software development as a share of gross domestic product is higher than that in the US. The ONS said this was a reasonable result given the large share of financial services in the UK economy.