IntroductionThe purpose of this publication is to provide revised statistical and methodological information following a comprehensive review of South Africa’s national accounts estimates and the change in the base year of constant price estimates from 1995 to 2000. Revised annual national accounts data are available for the calendar years 1946 to 2004, with quarterly frequency as from 1960.South Africa’s national accounts are compiled according to the specifications of the handbook of national accounts published under the auspices of the United Nations and known as the System of National Accounts (SNA). The latest version of the SNA was released in 1993. A supplement to the June 1999 Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Reserve Bank comprehensively reviewed the way in which the South African System of National Accounts incorporated the 1993 SNA guidelines.Recent developments in South Africa’s national accounts were outlined in the September and December 2004 issues of the Quarterly Bulletin of the South African Reserve Bank. The article “The integrated economic accounts of South Africa” in the Quarterly Bulletin of September 2004 presented a description and estimates of the sources of income and expenditure of the main institutional sectors (i.e. the general government, the household sector and the financial and non-financial corporate sectors). A “Note on benchmarking and rebasing of South Africa’s national accounts” was published in the Quarterly Bulletin of December 2004, briefly describing the quinquennial revisions and change to a new base year for constant price estimates of South Africa’s national accounts.Section 2 of this paper briefly reviews the principles of benchmarking and rebasing, while Section 3 describes the major statistical changes on account of the revisions and the change in the base year of constant price estimates from 1995 to 2000. A summary of principal sources of data and methods of calculation is presented in Section 4. Section 5 gives a short analysis of the various current accounts, accumulation accounts and balance sheets according to the 1993 SNA. Section 6 provides an update and overview of the developments in the institutional sector accounts as published in the Quarterly Bulletin of September 2004. Section 7 concludes with a summary.