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The long-awaited Scottish growth commission report has been touted as a prospectus for Scotland’s independence. But if voters or activists hope for a full assessment of Scotland’s spending, liabilities and its economy, it falls well short on several key and significant points.

One of the biggest gaps is in offering a full analysis of Scotland’s real economy, and the great extent to which it owned by foreign or non-Scottish companies, firms which therefore export profits, dividends and intellectual property.

Nearly all Scotland’s known oil reserves are owned by non-Scottish companies; its whisky industry is dominated by UK and overseas multinationals; its salmon industry is dominated by Norwegian and Ukrainians and its banking and financial sectors dominated by London and foreign entities.

During the last independence referendum, Alex Salmond, the then Scottish National party leader, put a huge stress on Scotland’s apparently buoyant GDP figures. When Scottish revenues were inflated by high oil prices, Salmond used Scottish government civil servants to produce boosterish data sets which showed at one stage Scotland’s GDP was in the global top 10. Once oil revenues evaporated, those boosterish Scottish government reports suddenly stopped coming.

After reading detailed criticisms of this from independent economists, the Guardian did an assessment in 2014 of Scotland’s actual domestically-held wealth using a measure called gross national income (GNI) which accounted as accurately as possible for the high degree of foreign ownership.

An analysis by John McLaren, an economist who gave advice to this SNP study, and Jo Armstrong, found the country’s actual wealth (based on what Scottish companies, institutions and individuals owned) was nearly £3,000 lower per head than its headline GDP figure.

The truth is that Scotland has a branch economy, a subsidiary of the UK and global economy, far more so than many of the small wealthy countries the SNP growth commission reports cites as models today.

The growth commission report also puts heavy emphasis on the UK debts and liabilities without doing any analysis of Scotland’s own debts and liabilities. Those liabilities linked directly to its devolved policy areas, which have mushroomed during the SNP’s tenure and are therefore directly relevant to the SNP’s economic stewardship so far.

In 2015, the Guardian estimated those liabilities, both public and private, would hit £50bn. Rail debt for Scottish railway investments were forecast to reach £5bn by 2019 (although that figure has fallen lately); local government debt hit £15bn two years ago while the Scottish Futures Trust, which specialises in a new form of private finance initiative-style school, roads, hospitals and college buildings contracts, has added another £6bn in liabilities to the Scottish sector’s books since Salmond set it up. At the same time, Scottish households were forecast to owe up to £6bn in student debt.

That leads to a third odd omission: there is no discussion about the absence of and need for whole government accounts in Scotland, which cover all the country’s devolved debts and liabilities and assets. This is central to any informed discussion about the financial health and sustainability of Scotland’s public sector, and therefore the SNP’s own economic competence.

The Wilson report talks at length about the UK’s whole government accounts, which provide an extremely detailed assessment of its assets, liabilities and debts. So why not get the same for Scotland? There have been long-standing complaints about their lack from Caroline Gardner, the auditor general for Scotland.

A spokesman for Wilson said:

The commission’s research included a full analysis of the assets and liabilities of the UK government, including the assets and liabilities directly associated with the Scottish government and with other Scottish public sector organisations. As with all other parts of the report, it is a summary of this that appears in the report.

Yet if any observer wanted a deep and detailed understanding of the economics of independence, you need a deep and detailed understanding of the country’s current economics. The SNP never talks about GNI; it never talks about the scale of devolved own debts and liabilities and it is only now working on Scottish whole government accounts. Some 20 months in the making, this report has not filled any of those gaps.