World Manufacturing Production (Methodological Note) (Note)

UNIDO Statistics publishes a series of quarterly reports about current growth trends of the world manufacturing production, which is based on the index numbers of industrial production (IIP) collected from national data sources. The main objective of this report is to provide an overview of the current growth trends of the world manufacturing production by country groups and by major sectors.

For years UNIDO statistical publications have been released only on the annual basis. While researchers devoted in fundamental economic studies prefer detail business structure statistics, other international data users, especially, policymakers and business associations require more recent assessment of the overall production growth trends. In order to meet the user’s demand in current industrial statistics as well as to present the growth assessment of the Organization in its capacity of a specialized UN agency in the field of the industrial developments, UNIDO presents this report with latest growth estimates for overall manufacturing industry as well as for its major branches.

Growth estimates published in quarterly reports are based on sound methodology, best practices and thoroughly checked data. Data compilation and presentation methods have regularly been updated since the first quarterly report was released, resulting in the methodology depicted in this document, which has been applied since the first quarter of 2017.