The Statistical Country Briefs were prepared by the Statistics Unit of the Development Policy and Strategic Research Branch. The data presented in the country briefs relate to basically three types of statistics: national accounts statistics, industrial statistics and commodity trade statistics. While the combined use of those statistics helps to provide a more complete description of both economic and industrial conditions, the reader should be aware that the practice introduces a variety of different statistical concepts, methods of measurement and definitions. Although considerable effort has been made to ensure consistency, the necessary information to do so is not always available. Thus, the user should consult the original sources when interpreting or analyzing the data. The following description briefly summarizes some of the more important statistical considerations.

I. National Accounts Statistics, i.e. GDP and MVA (manufacturing value added or GDP generated by the manufacturing sector): Data were derived from the estimates/nowcasts made by the Statistics Unit based on various sources including the Statistical Division of the United Nations Secretariat (UNSD), the World Bank, OECD and IMF.The underlying data for international and regional comparison were calculated from statistics for more than 170 countries (including over 130 developing countries). The user should note that the national accounting concepts generally differ from those employed for industrial statistics. Furthermore, in a few instances, the national accounting definition of the manufacturing sector is not precisely the same as that used for industrial statistics. It should also be noted that data on GDP are generally reported in market prices, but, for about half the countries, reported data on MVA (as well as on other sectoral GDPs) are in factor values, thus, excluding indirect taxes and including subsidies.

II. Industrial Statistics : The data referring to manufacturing branches defined at disaggregated levels (e.g., 2 and 3-digit levels) of the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC) were drawn from UNIDO Industrial Statistics Databases maintained by the Statistics Section. Large portion of the data for the years up to 1992 are those communicated to UNSD by national statistical offices (NSOs). The data for 1993 onwards as well as additions and revisions of data for previous years, were reported by NSOs through the UNIDO country questionnaire. With respect to the OECD member countries, most of the data for recent years were compiled by OECD and provided to UNIDO. These official data, which UNIDO collects directly or indirectly from NSOs, were supplemented with information obtained from other sources including estimates made by the Section.

National statistical practices may result in breaks in the annual data. Examples include the failure to report according to ISIC, incomplete coverage of manufacturing activities in one or more years and differences in the scope of the annual statistical enquiries. Therefore, there may be serious drawbacks in the data comparability not only across countries but also over time. Two exceptions relate to indexes of industrial production and data on constant-based value added which are at the national accounting concept comparable with MVA. For information on the possibilities for data incomparability / inconsistency, the user should consult the "country note" appearing in UNIDO's annual publication, International Yearbook of Industrial Statistics, and/or the staff of Statistics Section.

III. Trade Statistics: Data were compiled from United Nations' Commodity Trade Statistics Database (COMTRADE) and Monthly Bulletin of Statistics. The user should note that the United Nations Standard International Trade Classification (SITC) differs significantly from ISIC that is used for industrial production and related statistics.

IV.Selected indicators of demand-supply relations are based on the data that are stored in the UNIDO Industrial Demand-Supply Balance Databases (based on ISIC Rev.3) maintained by the Statistics Section.Production statistics were drawn from the UNIDO Industrial Statistics Databases at the 4-Digit Level of ISIC(Rev.3), while the trade data were drawn from the UN-COMTRADE. The original trade data, recorded according to SITC, were reclassified into 4-digit ISIC categories by employing the concordance between SITC and ISIC developed by UNIDO and OECD.

Symbols and Methods of Calculation Three dots (...) indicate that data are not available or are not separately reported. 'n.a.' indicates that data are not applicable. A dash (-) indicates that the amount is nil or negligible. Unless otherwise indicated all growth rates are based on data for each year in the period indicated and are calculated using a semi logarithmic regression over time.

For several statistics and indicators, national currencies have been converted to US dollar equivalent by using period average exchange rates as published in International Financial Statistics published by IMF.
Data converted to current dollars by using current exchange rates are liable to be strongly influenced by fluctuations in exchange rates.