United Nations Statistics Division CPC Ver.2 History, scope and purpose United Nations Statistics Division

Purpose Established in first version of CPC in 1989: Provide a framework for the international comparison of statistics, dealing with goods, services and assets Serve as a guide for developing or revising existing classification schemes of products in order to make them compatible with international standards

Purpose CPC was developed primarily to: enhance harmonization among various fields of economic and related statistics strengthen the role of national accounts as an instrument for the coordination of economic statistics CPC provides a basis for recompiling basic statistics from their original classifications into a standard classification for analytical use

Use CPC is used in many statistical programmes Can be applied to all that make reference to “products” and group data accordingly Obvious applications for all kinds of economic statistics CPC can serve as the standard classification for products, from which specialized subsets are derived

Use CPC is used also for non-statistical purposes Administrative and legal applications E.g. requirements for specific services provided

History 6 6

History CPC was originally released in 1989 as the “Provisional CPC” Purpose was to provide a framework that can be tested by countries and then be further refined Revisions have been undertaken in 1997, 2002 and 2007

History Revisions of CPC have reviewed concepts for defining and grouping products In particular services Sectoral review has dominated the revision processes Size of the classification has not changed significantly

History Number of categories in CPC versions: Prov. CPC 10 69 293 1050 Section Division Group Class Subclass Prov. CPC 10 69 293 1050 1811 CPC Ver.1.0 71 307 1167 2101 CPC Ver.1.1 70 305 2098 CPC Ver.2 324 1265 2738

Scope The scope of CPC has seen a number of changes in these revisions Changes are related to treatment of assets Non-produced assets Intangible assets Constructions

Structure The CPC structure has largely remained the same at higher levels Deviations are due to changes in scope Modifications at especially the lowest level have occurred due to the introduction of new products