Aircraft leasing activities set to distort Ireland’s trade figures

Leading economist John FitzGerald (pictured), writing in The Irish Times, stressed that Ireland is a global hub for aircraft leasing, with approximately 4,000 commercial aircraft leased through companies. These represent a total value of US$115 billion.

However, changes to accounting conventions will see the purchases of aircraft included as imports in the next set of national accounts compiled by the Irish Central Statistics Office.

Prof FitzGerald said: “As well as making the data on exports and imports difficult to interpret, this will also make the policy implications of changes in the current account of the balance of payments more obscure.”

In a research paper entitled Problems Interpreting National Accounts in a Globalised Economy, Prof FitzGerald outlines some of the problems involved in analysing Ireland’s idiosyncratic trading patterns.

He notes that gross domestic product (GDP), the standard measure of growth used internationally, represents a “seriously defective” indicator of Irish economic welfare.

Measuring economic recovery in Ireland was initially hampered by the so-called “patent cliff” in the pharmaceutical sector, which acted as a drag on GDP, particularly in 2013. Data for last year also indicated a major fall-off in the volume of output in the State’s large IT sector.

However, this occurred in tandem with a surge in employment and a bigger wage bill in the sector, all of which produced a negative effect in GDP but positive effect on gross national product (GNP), which excludes the impact of multinational profit flows. The confusing pattern appears to relate to the pricing of inputs.

“If one focuses instead on gross national product, their true contribution to the Irish economy is clearer,” Prof FitzGerald said.

Distorted
 

However, his research also points to a problem with this metric, because of the activity of a small number of firms, commonly referred to as “redomiciled plcs”, which also distorted GNP and the State’s balance of payments.

“Globalisation is making it more difficult to interpret traditional economic data, both in Ireland and in other countries such as the Netherlands. This increase in complexity is unavoidable,” he said.

“The solution lies in the provision of more detailed information, combined with a more critical analysis of what, in the past, seemed relatively simple national accounting concepts.”