Following previous communications, we have kept our position under review. It was anticipated that we would need to continue to respond to the ongoing pressures of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and this has proved to be the case.

We have continued to prioritise our short-term measures and therefore redirect resources. This, coupled with challenges obtaining responses from businesses during the pandemic, has impacted on data quality. With this in mind, we set out planned publication changes to some of our annual surveys.

Annual Business Survey (ABS)

The provisional 2020 ABS dataset will not be published in November 2021 as originally planned. Estimates for 2020 along with the revised 2019 ABS dataset will be published in early 2022 allowing more time to ensure the data are of sufficient quality. Users should note that the Annual Exporters and Importers release will also not be published in November 2021, and is likely to be released in 2022 following the ABS.

Annual Purchases Survey (APS)

The provisional 2020 APS dataset will not be published in November 2021 and the revised results due in May 2022 will also not be published as we would normally do. We will continue to evaluate the quality of the APS dataset and future publication dates.