It's Europe's Turn to Fudge GDP Numbers

Remember when the U.S. GDP was recalculated 3% higher? If you don't remember, go here to read it. Well, now it's Europe's turn.

The European Union's statistics office will revise upwards the EU's annual gross domestic product figures by 2.4 percentage points when it switches to a new accounting standard in September, the European Commission said on Thursday (16 January).

What they will include is the same as for the U.S., mainly Research and Development will be added. These things aren't really parts of the economy that are material, but still they will add it to the "GDP". This will have an effect on the "Debt to GDP" levels of Europe and also on the "Spending as a Percentage of GDP" and many other metrics.

For our country Belgium it will be an increase of about 2-3% or 10 billion euro. For Finland and Sweden it's an increase of 5% in GDP. 

So we magically become richer overnight in September.

I wonder when China will start "recalculating" its GDP. They say it will be implemented in China end 2014.