Valuation and Treatment of Depletable Resources in the National Accounts

To assess the feasibility of the national accounts treating as assets depletable resources extracted for sale, the paper examines three issues: 1. whether treating natural resources as assets when they are used requires symmetrical accounting when they enter economic reserves; 2. at what stage between existence in nature and extraction entry to reserves could be counted; and 3. how the value of the in-ground natural resource component could be determined. It suggests treating natural resources entering reserves as "imports" from the environmental account added to the capital account, registering additions to reserves at a stage involved in economic activities, and valuing reserves by procedures related to market price.