Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) is an annual estimate of the Scottish economy as part of the United Kingdom. It was first published in 1992, and yearly since 1995, with the exceptions of 2007 where there was no report due to a methodology review, and 2016 where there were two annual reports due to an acceleration of publishing timescale.
GERS was first published in 1992 by the Scottish Office under the Conservative Party government of Prime Minister John Major, at a time when the government was resisting calls for Scottish devolution. Its overall purpose was to estimate the overall UK borrowing requirement for Scotland - it was created at this time because Scottish Office ministers thought due to then-low oil prices, the report would show Scotland gained far more from the UK Treasury than it received. In a leaked memo the then Secretary of State for Scotland Ian Lang wrote "I judge that [GERS] is just what is needed at present in our campaign to maintain the initiative and undermine the other parties. This initiative could score against all of them.”
The methodology of this first report was questioned. In 2008 GERS for 2006/7 was published, including data for 2005/2006. This was the first fundamental review of GERS since it achieved National Statistics status in 2005, and also the first under the new SNP government. A number of presentation, data source and methodology changes were made. None of the changes radically altered the results of the analysis of Scotland's fiscal balance.