Technical notes to the Statistical Country Briefs

The Statistical Country Briefs are compiled by the Statistics Unit of UNIDO from its different databases. The data presented in the country briefs relate to: national accounts, industrial statistics and commodity trade data. While the combined use of those statistics helps to provide a more complete description of both economic and industrial conditions, the user 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 is advised to consult with the original sources when interpreting or analyzing the data. The following description briefly summarizes some of the important statistical considerations.

I. National Accounts: The statistical country brief includes two major variables namely GDP and MVA (manufacturing value added or GDP generated by the manufacturing sector) and their derivatives. Data are derived from the estimates/nowcasts made by the Statistics Unit based on various sources including the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other international data sources. The underlying data for international and regional comparison are calculated from statistics for more than 170 countries (including over 130 developing countries). It should be noted that the estimation of value added using national accounts concept generally differs from those employed for industrial statistics. It should also be noted that valuation concept applied in estimation of MVA and GDP may vary from country to country.

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. These data are collected from the national statistical offices (NSOs) except for OECD member countries. With respect to the OECD member countries, most of the data for recent years were compiled by OECD and provided to UNIDO. In some cases data are supplemented with information obtained from other sources including estimates made by UNIDO statisticians.

National statistical practices may result in breaks in the annual data. Some countries conduct industrial survey once in 5 years or at some other intervals. The breaks may also relate to the failure to report according to ISIC, incomplete coverage of manufacturing activities in one or more years or differences in the scope of the annual statistical enquiries. For information on 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 contact the Statistics Unit of UNIDO.

III. Trade Statistics: Data are compiled from United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (COMTRADE) and Monthly Bulletin of Statistics. The user should note that the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System (HS) 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). Production statistics are drawn from the UNIDO Industrial Statistics Databases at the 4-Digit Level of ISIC (Rev.3 & 4), while the trade data are obtained from the UN-COMTRADE. The original trade data, recorded according to HS, 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 most of the statistics and indicators displayed, national currencies have been converted to US dollar equivalent by using the average period exchange rates as presented in the International Financial Statistics by IMF.

Data converted to current US dollars by using the average period exchange rates are liable to be strongly influenced by fluctuations in the exchange rates.
The following abbreviations are used:

GDP	Gross Domestic Product
ISIC	International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities
MVA	Manufacturing Value Added (in national accounting concept)
SITC	Standard International Trade Classification
n.e.c	not elsewhere classified
n.e.s	not elsewhere specified

Symbols and Icons

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