Seasonal Adjustment of GDP Time Series – Private Sector Component

The General Authority for Statistics (GaStat) categorizes Saudi Arabia’s gross domestic product (GDP) into institutional oil and non-oil segments. The institutional non-oil segment can be further broken down into institutional government and institutional private sectors. For analysts, the seasonal adjustment of GDP and its components is an important one to make because it enables practitioners to better understand the makeup of each individual GDP series. There may be structural and cyclical elements, as well as elements that show repeat patterns according to the time of year. Seasonal adjustment is also a preparatory step that should be undertaken in advance of any modeling exercise to prepare short-term GDP forecasts.