Standards and Methods
The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) has published methodological guidelines for industrial statistics, as well as guidelines for the calculation of industrial production index numbers.
In the meantime, UNSD collects and publishes data on industrial statistics according to the List of Industrial Products, such as the Industrial Commodity Production Statistics Database, the Industrial Commodity Statistics Yearbook, etc.
Industrial Statistics
The International Recommendations for Industrial Statistics 2008 (IRIS 2008) provides a comprehensive methodological framework for collection and reporting of industrial statistics in all countries, irrespective of level of development of their statistical systems.Part I of the publication comprise international recommendations on industrial statistics relating to statistical units, characteristics of statistical units, data items and their definitions and the data items for international reporting. Part II of the publication contains guidance for implementation of the international recommendations and relate to performance indicators, data sources and data compilation methods, data-collection strategy, data quality and metadata, and dissemination of industrial statistics. IRIS 2008 are consistent with System of National Accounts 2008 and also harmonized with recommendation in other fields of economic statistics such as distributive trade, construction, and other related domains of structural and short-term statistics.
It is intended primarily for the producers of industrial statistics; particularly the staff of national statistical offices involved in the collection and compilation of industrial statistics, but may be also useful to researchers and other users interested in better understanding the nature of industrial statistics.
The International Recommendations for Industrial Statistics 2008 (IRIS 2008) is available in all UN official languages:
Industrial Production Index
The International Recommendations for the Index of Industrial Production 2010 (IRIIP 2010) is a revision of the original manual entitled Index Numbers of Industrial Production, 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.
A recent English version of The International Recommendations for the Index of Industrial Production 2010 is available in PDF format: