This publication sheds light on the dedicated efforts to achieve these ambitions through a compilation of papers that on the one hand exemplifies data collection and processing methods and approaches to the modernization hereof. Some papers, on the other hand, offer economic analyses of national industrial statistics, underlining the importance of data quality. The papers were part of the outcome of a workshop with the same title as this publication and dedicated to the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in November 2016.

The 2020 edition of the CIP report provides a global overview of the competitiveness of countries’ industrial performance around the world, by ranking 152 countries using a composite index based on three dimensions:
1) the capacity to produce and export manufactured goods;
2) technological deepening and upgrading; and
3) world impact.

Global manufacturing production has stabilized following the economic disruptions caused by

UNIDO compiles and provides value added estimates on total manufacturing in its
databases and publications, which are generally derived from two different sources.
On the one hand, detailed structural business statistics data in industrial statistics
(commonly based on surveys and censuses) provide figures on the value added of
manufacturing industries. On the other hand, manufacturing value added measures
an exclusive and exhaustive contribution of manufacturing to the gross domestic

Sub-annual macroeconomic statistics today are a key tool for economic policymaking, business cycle analysis and forecasting. However, these statistics are often influenced by seasonal fluctuations as well as calendar and trending day effects, which can cover relevant short- and long-term movements of the time series and obscure a clear understanding of economic phenomena.