2.5 Accounting actors

Economic units in the national economy engage in different types of economic activity, such as sales, lending and the payment of child allowances. Units engaging in similar economic activities can be clustered into larger groups.

SNA93 divides economic units into six mutually exclusive groups or institutional sectors. These sectors are used for classification purposes especially where the concern is with the receipt of income and decisions about incomes and funding. The industry classification that is based on the specific activities in which economic units engage, is used mainly for the analysis of value added (i.e. commodities produced). The main institutional sectors are as follows:

1. Non-financial corporations
2. Financial corporations
3. General government, including social security funds
4. Households
5. Non-profit institutions serving households
6. The rest of the world

The national economy is composed of the five first-mentioned sectors, but accounting rules require that economic transactions between resident and non-resident units are also recorded. The rest of the world sector is composed of those non-resident institutional units that engage in economic activity with resident institutional units. The inclusion of this sector in the national accounts helps to provide a clearer overall view of the behaviour of resident economic units.

Each institutional sector is further divided into sub-sectors. The choice of level of analysis will depend on the perspective adopted. National accounts data can be produced at the level of the whole national economy, the sectoral level or sub-sectoral level.