National Accounts Publications

The System of National Accounts (SNA) is the internationally agreed standard set of recommendations on how to compile measures of economic activity. The SNA describes a coherent, consistent and integrated set of macroeconomic accounts in the context of a set of internationally agreed concepts, definitions, classifications and accounting rules.

UNSD develops Handbooks of National Accounting to provide methodological support in the implementation of the 2008 SNA to countries at different stages of development or milestones. More emphasis is expected on the practical nature of the methodological guidance and more consideration is envisaged for fundamental issues of data sources and quality.

To serve the analytical purposes of the United Nations and the public the UNSD, mandated by the UNSC, annually collects national accounts data from Member States. These data are also used for monitoring the scope, detail and compliance to the SNA of the compilation of the national accounts by countries. Currently, two data sets are compiled and published in two publications, namely: the National Accounts Statistics: Main Aggregates and Detailed Tables of which the data can be obtained from UNdata on the UNSD website; and the National Accounts Statistics: Analysis of Main Aggregate of which the data can be obtained from the National Accounts Main Aggregates Database or UNdata on the UNSD website.