Comparison of economic performance over time is a key factor in economic analysis and a fundamental requirement for policy-making. Short-term indicators play an important role in this context by providing such comparison indicators. Among these short-term indicators, the index of industrial production has historically been one of the most well known and well-used indicators. The index of industrial production measures volume changes in the production of an economy, and therefore provides a measurement that is free of influences of price changes, making it an indicator of choice for many applications. While being an important indicator in its own right, the index of industrial production also plays an important role in the System of National Accounts, since it reflects temporal changes in the value added for individual industries, as well as having a strong relationship with the performance of the economy as a whole.

This publication is a revision of the original Index Numbers of Industrial Production manual published by the United Nations in 1950. It takes into account methodological developments in the field of index number calculation that emerged over the past decades and describes new recommended methodological standards for the compilation of index numbers of industrial production.

The updated methodology described in this publication, used with the Manual for an index of services production, published by the OECD, now provides assistance to data producers in the compilation of volume indices for the majority of goods and services producing industries.

In addition to outlining the standard methodology, this publication also provides practical guidance for actual steps in the index number calculation and presents recommended methods for each industry in its scope to assist countries in producing high-quality shortterm economic indicators that are also internationally comparable.