GDP Quarterly National Accounts: 2025 Quarter 4 (October to December)

Revisions

This release includes revisions to data from Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2024 to Quarter 4 (Oct to Dec) 2025 because of routine updates to source data, including the use of revised or late responses to business surveys and the update of estimates based on equivalent UK GDP data from the latest UK Quarterly National Accounts.

Details of revisions to GDP growth of each broad industry can be found in the standalone GDP by volume tables, while revisions to the nominal value of other key statistics are detailed in the quarterly national accounts summary tables.

Quarterly GDP growth has been revised in four of the last eight quarters, and while there are small changes at the headline level in both upward and downward directions, there has been no significant change to recent trends or to annual growth rates in 2024 and 2025.

GDP per person estimates have also been revised from 2024 Quarter 3 (July to September) onwards due to the inclusion of 2024 based mid-year population projections for 2025 and 2026. As a result of the updated population estimates, annual GDP per person growth has been revised up slightly in 2025.

Measurement of GDP and consistency with results for the UK as a whole

As discussed in previous releases there can be differences between the estimates of GDP for Scotland and the UK as a whole due to the faster timescales for updates at UK level and differences between methodologies used. At the present time, UK statistics for real terms GDP growth are based on double deflated GVA and weights up to 2023 (that is, the prices of both outputs and inputs are separately accounted for), while the estimates for Scotland are double deflated up to 2022, with estimates for 2023 based on deflated output only. These differences are unavoidable, and while we aim for coherence at the level of total GDP, users should be conscious of the potential for differences when making comparisons of detailed components in recent years.

Users should also continue to be cautious about drawing conclusions based on comparisons between Scotland and the UK or other countries for the periods when the economy was most severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic due to the higher level of uncertainty during these periods and differences in data sources and methods used.