The Annual Business Inquiry (ABI)

The Annual Business Inquiry (ABI) is the Office for National Statistics (ONS) integrated survey of employment and financial information. This inquiry samples UK Businesses, and other related establishments, according to their employment size and industry sector. The statistics produced help to improve the overall quality of national accounts and the measurement of gross domestic product (GDP).

In addition to the National Accounts, the ABI is also the main source of data to enable the requirements of the European Structural Business Statistics Regulation (SBSR) to be met and the financial information is also used by the Scottish Executive and Welsh Assembly in the compilation of both regional country specific Input/Output tables and Indices of Production.

As this inquiry is conducted in two parts, collecting financial and employment information, the two have different coverage areas. The financial inquiry covers about two-thirds of the UK economy including production, construction, distribution, and service industries.

The employment inquiry has a much larger coverage area.

These pages deal mainly with the financial information but make use of the employment data throughout.

About ABI

In 1996, ONS began work on a project to combine a number of annual inquires into a single inquiry called ABI. ABI aims to prove coherent and consistent annual industrial statistics covering a range of variables for the whole economy.

ABI was first conducted in respect of the year 1998 and results started to become available in February 2000. The initial project was managed by ONS in close consultation with other government departments, for example, the Department of Education and Employment (DfEE), HM Treasury, Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) (now the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)), the Scottish Executive and the national Assembly for Wales.

Data not available on this site may be available either as a standard extract or as a special analysis, which may or may not be chargeable. Information on this service can be obtained by contacting the ABI department directly.

Further reading

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