System of National Accounts

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The System of National Accounts or SNA (until 1993 known as the United Nations System of National Accounts or UNSNA^[1]) is an international standard system of concepts and methods for national accounts, nowadays used by most countries in the world. The first international standard was published in 1953.^[2] Manuals have subsequently been released for the 1968 revision, the 1993 revision, and the 2008 revision.^[3] The draft version for the SNA 2025 revision was adopted by the United Nations Statistical Commission at its 56th Session in March 2025.^[4] Behind the accounts system, there is also a system of people: the people who are cooperating around the world to produce the statistics, for use by government agencies, businesspeople, academics and interest groups from all nations.^[5]

The aim of SNA is to provide an integrated, complete system of standard national accounts, for the purpose of economic analysis, policy-making and decision-making. When individual countries use SNA standards to guide the construction of their own national accounting systems, it results in much better data quality and comparability. In turn, that helps to form more accurate judgements about situations, and to put economic issues in correct proportion - nationally and internationally.

Adherence to SNA standards by national statistics offices and by governments is strongly encouraged, but it is voluntary and not mandatory. What countries are able to do, will depend on available capacity, local priorities, and the existing state of statistical development. However, cooperation with SNA has a lot of benefits in terms of gaining access to data, exchange of data, data dissemination, cost-saving, technical support, and scientific advice for data production. Most countries see the advantages, and are willing to participate.

The SNA-based European System of Accounts (ESA)^[6] is an exceptional case, because using ESA standards is compulsory for all member states of the European Union. This legal requirement for uniform accounting standards exists primarily because of mutual financial claims and obligations by member governments and EU organizations.^[7] Another exception is North Korea. North Korea is a member of the United Nations since 1991, but does not use SNA as a framework for its economic data production. Although Korea’s Central Bureau of Statistics does traditionally produce economic statistics, using a modified version of the Material Product System, its macro-economic data area are not (or very rarely) published for general release (various UN agencies do produce some estimates).^[8]

In various versions, the SNA system has now been adopted or applied in more than 200 countries and areas,^[9] although in many cases with some adaptations for unusual local circumstances.^[10] Nowadays, whenever people in the world are using macro-economic data, for their own nation or internationally, they are most often using information sourced (partly or completely) from SNA-type accounts, or from social accounts "strongly influenced" by SNA concepts, designs and classifications.^[11]

The grid of the SNA social accounting system continues to develop and expand, and is coordinated by five international organizations: United Nations Statistics Division, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and Eurostat. All these organizations (and related organizations) have a vital interest in internationally comparable economic and financial data, collected every year from national statistics offices, and they play an active role in publishing international statistics regularly for data users worldwide. SNA accounts are also "building blocks" for a lot more economic data which are created using SNA information.