The Economic Statistics Branch of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) maintains and annually updates the National Accounts Main Aggregates database. It consists of a complete and consistent set of time series, from 1970 onwards, of the main National Accounts aggregates of all UN Members States and other territories in the world for which National Accounts information is available. Its contents are based on the official data reported to UNSD through the annual National Accounts Questionnaire, supplemented with data estimates for any years and countries with incomplete or inconsistent information.

Estimates are done when no official data are available. The final aggregates are provided in national currency and in United States dollars. The main aggregates in the database include Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by type of expenditure and Gross Value Added by kind of economic activity, both at current and at constant market prices. It also contains Gross National Income (GNI) at current prices and analytical indicators and ratios that reflect economic structure and trends of countries and areas. These analytical indicators are: annual per capita GDP and GNI (calculated using actual population or annual population estimates from the UN Population Division); annual growth rates of GDP; annual shares in total GDP and total Gross Value added of their respective components; and price trends as defined by the implicit price deflators of GDP.

The National Accounts Main Aggregates database is the product of a global cooperation effort between UNSD, international statistical agencies, and the national statistical services of more than 200 countries and territories. It has been prepared in response to a request by the Statistical Commission during its first session in 1947, and is in agreement with the resolution 48/223 C of the UN General Assembly, which mandates the Committee on Contributions to prepare the Scale of Assessment for UN Member States on the basis of the most recent reliable and verifiable available data on national accounts of as many countries and areas as possible, and that these data be published and disseminated regularly.


8 April 2019 Data updated and footnotes added to China.

Download the footnotes in Excel format

The Economic Statistics Branch of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) maintains and 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 2023 yearbook with detailed national accounts statistics of 208 countries or areas for the years 2022 to 2023 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.

DEFINITIONS

OFFICIAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE (ODA)

Grants or loans to countries and territories on the DAC List of ODA Recipients (developing countries) and to multilateral agencies which are: (a) undertaken by the official sector; (b) with promotion of economic development and welfare as the main objective; (c) at concessional financial terms (if a loan, having a grant element of at least 25 per cent). In addition to financial flows, technical co-operation is included in aid. Grants, loans and credits for military purposes are excluded. Transfer payments to private individuals (e.g. pensions, reparations or insurance payouts) are in general not counted.

GRANT ELEMENT
Reflects the financial terms of a commitment: interest rate, maturity and grace period (interval to first repayment of capital). It measures the concessionality of a loan, expressed as the percentage by which the present value of the expected stream of repayments falls short of the repayments that would have been generated at a given reference rate of interest. The reference rate is 10% in DAC statistics. This rate was selected as a proxy for the marginal efficiency of the domestic investment, i.e. as an indication of the opportunity cost to the donor of making the funds available. Thus, the grant element is nil for a loan carrying an interest rate of 10 percent; it is 100 per cent for a grant; and it lies between these two limits for a soft loan. If the face value of a loan is multiplied by its grant element, the result is referred to as the grant equivalent of that loan. (cf. Concessionality Level) (Note: the grant element concept is not applied to the market-based lending operations of the multilateral development banks.)

ODA RECEIPTS
Total ODA receipts to recipient countries includes bilateral ODA provided directly by a donor country and multilateral ODA, channeled via an international organisation active in development (e.g. World Bank, UNDP). In tables showing total receipts of recipient countries, the outflows of multilateral agencies to those countries is shown, not the contributions which the agencies received from donors

MULTILATERAL OUTFLOWS
Aid activities financed from multilateral development institutions' regular budgets. Projects executed by multilateral organizations on behalf of donor countries are classified as bilateral flows, since it is the donor country that effectively controls the use of the funds.

DEBT REORGANISATION
(also Restructuring) Any action officially agreed between creditor and debtor that alters the terms previously established for repayment. This may include forgiveness (extinction of the loan), or rescheduling which can be implemented either by revising the repayment schedule or extending a new refinancing loan.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) database presents data for the global SDG indicators that were compiled through the UN System in preparation for the Secretary-Generals annual report on “Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals”.

The data series respond to the revised global indicator framework that was agreed by the UN Statistical Commission at its forty-eighth session in March 2017. The database contains SDG indicator series and additional indicator series. The list of SDG indicators is subject to refinement by the UN Statistical Commission.

The SDG database was updated on the 20 June 2018. For technical reasons, the database is not currently available in UNdata. Please refer to the SDG database website while further work is done to make it available again in UNdata.