Press Statement

Preasráiteas

03 March 2023

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) today (03 March 2023) published Quarterly National Accounts and International Accounts results for Quarter 4,  2022 and preliminary results for the Year 2022 following on from the Preliminary GDP Estimates for Q4 2022 and Year 2022 issued on 30 January 2023 as a CSO Frontier Series output. 

Assistant Director General with responsibility for Economic Statistics, Jennifer Banim, commented:

“The impacts of the conflict in Ukraine, the rise in inflation, and the continued unwinding of the COVID-19-related restrictions varied across the sectors of the economy in 2022 and today’s results show the overall annual impact and the underlying quarterly variations.

Growth continued in the more globalised sectors of the economy with Industry increasing by 23.0% and the Information & Communication sector up by 11.4% in 2022.  A number of sectors focused on the domestic market experienced markedly higher levels of economic activity in the year, with the Construction sector growing by 14.4%, the Distribution, Transport, Hotels & Restaurants sector by 11.6%, and Arts & Entertainment increasing by 26.6%. All other sectors posted more modest single-digit growth in the year.  Overall, multinational sector growth was 19.4% and in 2022, these sectors accounted for 55.7% of total value added in the economy, compared with a 53.0% share in 2021, a 49.5% share in 2020, and a 42.5% share in 2019.

Looking at expenditure in the economy, personal spending on goods and services (the PCE indicator) increased by 6.6% in 2022, while Government spending on goods and services increased by 0.7% in the year. Looking at PCE constant price levels over the past four years, personal spending reached €111.4 billion in 2022, a further recovery compared with the 2021 result of €104.5 billion, but 0.6% lower than the €112.1 billion pre-pandemic level of spending in 2019.  PCE accounted for 23.5% of GDP in 2022, down from 24.7% of GDP in 2021, 26.8% in 2020, and 31.9% in 2019.

Overall, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is estimated to have increased by 12.0% in 2022, driven largely by growth of 28.5% in Investment in the year. Gross National Product (GNP) - a measure of economic activity that excludes the profits of multinationals - increased by 6.7% in 2022.” 

Commenting on the impact of globalisation activities in 2022, Ms Banim said:

“Compared with 2021, investment in Intellectual Property Products (IPP) increased by 34.0% in 2022, driving an increase of 13.2% in Final Domestic Demand in the year. Modified Domestic Demand (MDD), a broad measure of underlying domestic demand that excludes IPP and aircraft-related globalisation effects, increased by 8.2% in 2022. 

In International Accounts results, the Current Account of the Balance of Payments recorded a surplus of €44.2 billion in flows with the rest of the world in 2022, driven largely by an improvement in the merchandise trade balance of €37.1 billion. However, a dis-improvement of €17.3 billion in the Services balance between 2021 and 2022 reflects higher levels of Royalty and IPP imports in 2022.  Multinational profit net outflows were €119.7 billion in the year, an increase of €33.1 billion on 2021 levels.

Today’s International Accounts publication includes a table of Current Account transactions with the UK.  The results show a surplus of €10.8 billion for Trade in Goods & Services with the UK in 2022, a dis-improvement of €5.1 billion on the 2021 trade balance.  The trade surplus was offset by a deficit of €17.6 billion for net income flows, giving an overall Current Account deficit of €6.8 billion with the UK in 2022.” 

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