Statistics Iceland releases now an aggregated overview of quarterly central and local government non-financial accounts for the 4th quarter of 2005. The figures are on accruals basis. These quarterly overviews are published 90 days after the end of the respective quarter and they are now available back to the 1st quarter of 2004.

The accounts for the central government are based on information from the Government Financial Management Authority but the data for local governments are based on a sample of accounts from 8 municipalities with 54,4% of the population in Iceland. These have been grossed up by Statistics Iceland. So far the breakdown of the data is rather limited but there are plans for providing more detailed data in the future. Here, two concepts are used to measure the financial result of the government. The first one is the concept called financial balance, which more or less corresponds to the national accounts concept, net lending/net borrowing, where gross fixed capital formation has been expensed but depreciation has not. The other concept is the operating balance where depreciation is expensed but gross fixed capital formation is not. Only the first concept is available for the central government and therefore the result for the general government is also restricted to that concept.

According to these preliminary figures, the central government revenue for the 4th quarter of 2005 amounted to 92.4 billion ISK and the financial balance was positive by 13.0 billion ISK, an improvement from the previous year.

The revenue of the local government in the 4th quarter 2005 is estimated to have amounted to 34.0 billion ISK, current expenditure to 32.0 billion rendering the operating balance positive by 2.0 billion ISK. However, the financial balance is estimated to have been negative by 1.4 billion ISK owing to higher investments than depreciation. Both these indicators showed an improvement in local government finances from the same quarter in previous year.

The total revenue of the general government, i.e. central and local government together, is estimated 126.4 billion ISK in the 4th quarter of 2005 and increased by 7.6% from the same quarter the year before. At the same time the current expenditure including investments but excluding depreciation increased substantially less or by 2.0% which resulted in an improvement of the overall financial balances of general government. Now it is estimated as 9.2% of total revenue compared with 4.2% in the 4th quarter of 2004.

Accumulated figures for the general government for the 1st to 4th quarter 2005 show an increase in total revenue of 16.7% from previous period and a considerable increase in financial balance. In the third quarter Iceland Telecom was privatized. The Icelandic Treasury’s proceeds from the sale amounted to 58.4 billion ISK but are not considered as revenue according to the national accounts and are therefore not included in the total revenue of the year. Capital income tax on the sale, amounting to 6.2 billion ISK, is also excluded in full on both the income and expenditure side.

In the figures presented here, both revenue and expenditure figures are recorded on  accruals basis whereas the monthly figures published by the Government Financial Authority are on cash basis. Accruals basis means that flows are recorded when they are established regardless of when the actual payment is made. The data presented here, both for central and local government, are preliminary. In particular, the information on investment of the local government is sketchy. In some cases these figures are recorded on a net basis in local government accounts. Here an attempt is made to record these items gross.

In order to ensure most proper comparision, preliminary figures for 2005 are compared with comparable preliminary figures of previous year, not final results of that year.

Statistics (See "Quarterly non-financial accounts for general government 2004-2005")