Supply and Use Table (SUT): An essential component to ensure consistency inside the System of National Accounts (SNA).
The Supply and Use Table (SUT) is an essential table in the device of the System of National Accounts (SNA) which governs the national accounting, because it highlights about the inter-connections within the system and reveals thus their inconsistencies. From the high amount of data the SUT conception confronts, it reinforces the measures exhaustiveness and the quality, therefore the confident within the indicators produced by National Accounts. In its standard form, it is presented as an integrated system of the three Gross Domestic Product (GDP) approaches (Gross Output, Expenditure and Income), through five different tables,arranged as follow:

(4) Gross Output Matrix by Industry and Products
(1) Supply Table / (2) Intermediate Consumption Matrix (IC) / (3) Final Use Table
(5) Value- Added Primary Distribution Table

(1)  Products x Transactions classifications (P1, P7, D2, D3, Trade / Transport margins)

(2)  Products x Industries classification for P2 transaction

(3)  Products x Transactions classifications (P3, P5, P6)

(4)  Products x Industries classifications for P1 transaction

(5)  Transactions (B1, D1, D2, D3, B2/B3) x Industries classifications.

Two interpretation of the SUT:

  1. line interpretation (1) (2) (3) describes the economic cycle of a product on the market and shows the supply and use balancing for each one.
  2. column interpretation (4) (2) (5) describes the production function of the industries, from which comes the value Added (wealth surplus generated during the period).

One may say about the SUT, it is an integrated system thanks to the IC matrix (2) because it is simultaneously both consistent in line and column.

The SUT conception is based in one hand on the independency of these approaches calculation and in the other hand on their interdependency, since they represent nevertheless one andthe same reality. Though the sources used are from multiple origins and are not spontaneously coherent, the National Account compiler deduces from what precede that at least, it always exists an element from which comes the noted inconsistencies and on which it is always possible to act and restore the overall consistency. The system of National Accounts (SNA) and their regional variations, such as the European System of Accounts (ESA), give the keys to achievethis overall consistency throughthe SUT : making SUT resulted inevitably in facing inconsistencies. Reviewing all the available data and estimated ones, being constrained to question them and test their relevance so that they provide the most reliable economic activity indices possible, ensure National Accounts users that the SNA has solid foundations. The SUT as the best foundations for the SNA is materialized into table (5). While table (5) is resulted from the four other tables, it is also the starting point of the economy measured through the Income approach and the Integrated Sector Accounts (ISA).
Main advantages of SUT:

·  SUT presents in a clear and synthetic way the great amount of data necessary toits conception, whetherobserved or estimated like the informal economy.

·  SUT reveals the inconsistencies within and between the collected information sourcesand give an appropriate framework to help for arbitrations.

·  SUT describes within the SNA framework the economic cycle of “Industries - products - institutional sectors” and thus SUT links all the GDP approaches together.

·  Conceived at current prices, SUT also provides an appropriate framework to the calculation of a second SUT : the SUT at constant prices. This one is obtainedby applying to each cell[1] of the SUT at current prices, the differentiated corresponding price index. The National Accounts aggregates and indicators deflated are drawn from this second table.

SUT may therefore present some limits, but which are no less than those inherited of the GDP conceptual ones: GDP concepts doe not take into account for example, non-economic information such as the welfare[2] notion. Until a new SNA comes to extend this type of concepts and includes these concerns, SUT remains by far, the tool guaranteeing the better, a good quality of the system of National Accounts aggregates’ calculation, such as GDP, used worldwide.

[1] A cell represents herethe crossing of two National Accounts classification (“Products x Operations” in general, “Industries x Products” in the cases of Output and Intermediate matrices)

[2] The Stiglitz-SEN-Fitoussi commission submitted in September 2009 a report about the measure of economic performance and social progress.It privileged in its work the multidimensional nature of welfare. It did not propose an instrument already made up to catch that nature, but this report can be read like as a draft of the main outlinesto follow during the make up of such an instrument.