The purpose of the National Accounts is to present, in a coherent
macro-economic framework, the key variables of the economy of a country. To
measure these variables, it creates a synthesis of numerous basic data supplied
by the statistical system of the country, or by administrative registers.
Its most well-known result is the gross domestic product (GDP), but it has several
other uses, in particular in the areas of forecasting, short-term trends and
macro-economic analysis.
The principles and the methods of the National Accounts are described in full
in the Manual entitled “1993 System of National Accounts”, published
under the auspices of the main international organisations (UN, EU, IMF, World
Bank, OECD)