National Accounts Official Country Data

The Economic Statistics Branch of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) maintains and annually updates the National Accounts Official Country Data database. This work is carried out in accordance with the recommendation of the Statistical Commission at its first session¹ that the Statistics Division of the United Nations should publish regularly the most recent available data on national accounts for as many countries and areas as possible. The database contains detailed official national accounts statistics in national currencies as provided by the National Statistical Offices².

Data are available for most of the countries or areas of the world and form a valuable source of information on their economies. The database contains data as far back as 1946, up to the year t-1, with data for most countries available from the 1970s. The database covers not only national accounts main aggregates such as gross domestic product, national income, saving, value added by industry and household and government consumption expenditure and its relationships; but also detailed statistics for institutional sectors (including the rest of the world), comprising the production account, the generation of income account, the allocation of primary income account, the secondary distribution of income account, the use of disposable income account, the capital account and the financial account, if they are compiled by countries.

The statistics for each country or area are presented according to the uniform table headings and classifications as recommended in the United Nations System of National Accounts 1993 (1993 SNA). A summary of the 1993 SNA conceptual framework, classifications and definitions are included in the yearly publication “National Accounts Statistics, Main Aggregates and Detailed Tables”. A pdf version of the 2017 yearbook with detailed national accounts statistics of 209 countries or areas for the years 2006 to 2017 can be accessed free-of-charge from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/pubsDB.asp?pType=3. Former editions of the yearbook (in pdf and print versions) are also available. Details on the publication can be found at http://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/madt.asp. Requests for customized data downloads can be addressed to sna@un.org.

1/ United Nations, 1947, Official Records of the Economic and Social Council Supplement No. 6 (E/264), chap. VIII, para. 42. New York: United Nations Publications.
2/ Different series numbers (column “Series”) are used to store different time-series versions of national accounts statistics. Series numbers with two digits (10,20) refer to data compiled following the 1968 SNA national accounts methodology, while series numbers with three digits (100, 200, etc) refer to data compiled using the 1993 SNA national accounts methodology, and series numbers with four digits (1000, 1100, etc) refer to data compiled using the 2008 SNA national accounts methodology. In addition to different methodologies, different series numbers are used when data are reported in different currencies, fiscal years, or by different sources. Furthermore, data are stored under a new series number whenever there are significant changes in compilation practices which make the time series no longer comparable.