Accounts: Private households’ expenditure in the economy amounts to half the size of economy.

Including the spending of non-profitable institutions to serve households, at current price level, final consumption expenditure of households equals Nu 59.2B.

Household consumption expenditure, in economic terms, consists of the expenditure incurred by resident households on individual consumption of goods and services such as rent, food, clothing, and transportation, among others.

Household final consumption expenditure is however not an exhaustive measure of the goods and services consumed by households because government spending and subsidies on households are not included. For instance, government expenditure on defence, safety and order, environmental protection, and national bodies such as Parliament, which may have direct or indirect individual benefits are not included.

Breaking it down, the economy spent about Nu 23.1 billion (B) on food and non-alcoholic beverages and over Nu 13.2B for housing, water, electricity, gas and fuels.  For furnishing, routine maintenance of homes and purchasing household equipment, the economy spent around Nu 2.2B.

Household spending on alcoholic beverages, tobacco and narcotics amounts to Nu 1.7B. Transportation exhausted about Nu 2.7B from Bhutanese pockets.

While Nu 1.7B of expenditure were made on education, Bhutanese spend almost equal amount in restaurants and hotels.

Households in the economy spent the least amount of Nu 623M for recreational and cultural purposes.

Between 2013 and 2014, total final private household expenditure rose by 17 percent.

The final consumption expenditure in 2014, which consists of both private and government expenditure sums up to Nu 75.6B, of which more than 73 percent pertains to private consumption.

Government consumption on account of compensation on employees owing to salary increments, capital and current expenditures constituted over Nu 20B in 2014.

The gross domestic saving, or the total goods and service produced in a year (Nu 119B) less the total expenditure, comes to around Nu 43.8B, an increase of 60 percent in 2014 compared with 2013.

Tshering Dorji

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