The International Standard of Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities
(ISIC) code was developed by the UN as a standard way of classifying economic
activities. The ISIC code groups together enterprises if they produce the
same type of goods or service or if they use similar processes (i.e. the same
raw materials, process of production, skills or technology). The ISIC system
is now used widely by governments and international bodies as a way if classifying
data according to economic activity. One key purpose of the code is to standardize
data collection and promote international comparability.
The ISIC code is periodically reviewed as new types of economic activity
become important and to harmonize with other classification systems. The original
code was adopted in 1948. Revision 1 was issued in 1958. Revision 2 was published
in 1968. All countries report to Revision 2 of the code. Revision 3 of the
code was published in 1989. Most but not all countries now report to this
revision.
The ISIC code covers all areas of economic activity but the UNIDO databanks
only relate to the manufacturing section of the code. The code is organised
hierarchically with each level containing an increasing level of detail. For example, manufacturing is subdivided into around 20 categories at the 2 digit level, 30 categories at the 3 digit level and 81 categories at the 4 digit level. ISIC levels beyond 4 have been discontinued
in the latest ISIC revision.
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ISIC Combinations
Some of the ISIC categories are combined to form new classifications e.g.
at the 4 digit level the combination ISIC 3841B consists of:
- 3841 ship building and repairing
- 3842 manufacture of railroad equipment
- 3844 manufacture of motorcycles and bicycles
- 3845 manufacture of aircraft
All the databases contain some of these ISIC combinations. Unfortunately
UNIDO only provides definitions of these in terms of the original code numbers,
so the user may need to work backwards from these numbers to find the descriptions.
ISIC combination code lists are provided in the INDSTAT User Guides:
The Classifications
Section of the United Nations produces more general information and news
about the ISIC code and other UN classification systems.
Note: You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader software to
read documents in pdf format. It can be downloaded free of charge from the
Adobe website.