System of National Accounts revision

CLASSIFICATION

The United Nations Statistical Commission meeting in March 2021 will decide to update the 2008 SNA by 2025.


The FIDIC-EFCA Survey uses investment and supply-use tables taken from national accounts to forecast demand and fee levels for consulting engineering services in countries and regions that have adopted the UN 2008 System of National Accounts (SNA).

The United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSD) organises the development and implementation of the international classifications of economic activities (ISIC) and of products and services (CPC) which are the basis for the SNA.

The UNSD annual meeting in March 2021 will decide to revise the 2008 SNA by 2025 according to the usual approximately 15-year cycle.

This process is necessarily accompanied by an updating of ISIC and the CPC and of all the main national accounts systems and classifications that depend upon ISIC and the CPC, notably the European Union Eurostat NACE (economic activities) and CPA (products) classifications.

EFCA has made proposals to Eurostat for the NACE revision (see a wiki item and a blog post). This revision will be finalised once the SNA and ISIC revisions are complete. EFCA will therefore work to ensure that its proposals are taken up at the international UNSD level.

In the meantime, sector organisations in EU Member States were asked to comment on Eurostat's NACE revision proposals by 14 August 2020. For professional service (NACE Division M), EFAA circulated draft recommendations for Member Association feedback to national statistic agencies, see NACE 2 revision recommendations.

For the NACE review, there were 1800 proposals that have been distilled down to 1500. A draft NACE Rev. 3 will be circulated once the list of SNA issues has been finalised. But the new NACE and the new products CPA will not be released until ISIC is finalised, probably in 2026 and not 2025 as planned.

A report circulated to EFCA Member Associations reviews the implications of the UNSD's initial proposals for the SNA revision for the consulting engineering industry. In a nutshell: No major changes, but changes nonetheless.

It is unclear when comments to the proposed SNA25 will be called for and there is some concern that the UNSD established its own list of issues without extensive consultation.

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