United Nations Statistics Division

1
CPC Ver.2 History, scope and purpose

• United Nations Statistics Division

2
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

3
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

4
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

5
Use

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

6
History
6
7
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

8
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

9
History

• Number of categories in CPC versions

Section Division Group Class Subclass
Prov. CPC 10 69 293 1050 1811
CPC Ver.1.0 10 71 307 1167 2101
CPC Ver.1.1 10 70 305 1167 2098
CPC Ver.2 10 71 324 1265 2738
10
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

11
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