Statistical Appendix
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Abstract

Statistical Appendix

Statistical Appendix

Introduction

Assumptions and Conventions

The statistical tables in this appendix have been compiled on the basis of information available on or before September 20, 1985. The recording of the figures for 1985 and beyond with the same degree of precision as the historical figures is solely a matter of convenience. It is not intended to convey any connotation regarding the degree of accuracy attaching to these estimates and projections.

A few of the tables include series expressed in SDRs (or based on SDR values). The U.S. dollar/SDR conversion rates used in this report are, for the historical period, the geometric averages of daily rates given in the Fund’s International Financial Statistics (IFS). For the years prior to 1970, these data impute to the SDR a value of US$1.00. For the period from July 23, 1985 to the end of 1986, a rate of US$1,025 = SDR 1—the rate prevailing on July 22, 1985—is used.

The estimates and projections for 1985 and 1986 are predicated on a number of assumptions and working hypotheses:

(1) for the major currencies, the exchange rates of July 22, 1985 (the first business day after the realignment of those currencies that participate in the European Monetary System) will prevail throughout the balance of 1985 and 1986;

(2) “present” policies of national authorities will be maintained; and

(3) the price of oil will remain constant in U.S. dollar terms at the average price prevailing in early August 1985, which is estimated at $26.50 per barrel.

Classification of Countries

The classification of countries used in World Economic Outlook reports since 1979 was revised with the April 1985 report. Under the former classification, Fund member countries were divided into three groups: industrial countries, oil exporting developing countries, and non-oil developing countries. Although essential to meaningful analysis from the early to mid-1970s to the early 1980s, continued primary reliance on this division of countries was increasingly hampering analysis of the problems of the mid-1980s. The essential difficulty was that other characteristics of a country’s external economic relations had come to the fore. For instance, with the advent of the debt crisis of 1982, developments in countries’ current account balances became much more a function of the type of financing (private vs. official) that they relied upon than of the commodity composition of their exports. Moreover, the problems associated with the primacy attached to the distinction between oil exporting developing countries and non-oil exporting developing countries were compounded by the out-of-date criterion used to make the distinction, which ignored the many “non-oil” countries that had in fact become producers and exporters of oil.

In the light of these considerations, a new, streamlined classification scheme was adopted which, while preserving continuity through continued publication for an interim period of the old aggregates, (1) eliminates the primacy of the oil/non-oil distinction among developing countries, (2) redefines the regional subgroups of developing countries to include the oil exporting countries, and (3) provides the scope for more elaborate and meaningful analytical distinctions among developing countries. With regard to the latter, it is expected that, again with due regard to the requirements of continuity, these analytical groupings will evolve over time in the light both of structural changes in member countries and of changes in the circumstances facing the world economy. In particular, it is anticipated that the base periods, currently centered around 1980, used to classify countries will be gradually rolled forward, perhaps every two or three years.

The analytical groupings currently used by the staff are (1) countries grouped by predominant export; (2) countries grouped by financial criteria; (3) countries grouped by other criteria; and (4) countries grouped by the former classification criteria. At present, two financial criteria are distinguished: by predominant type of creditor and by the degree of debt-servicing difficulties faced by countries. The country groups shown under the heading of “by other criteria” include low-income countries except China and India; sub-Saharan Africa (excluding Nigeria); and a breakdown of the Middle Eastern region into “oil” and “non-oil” countries. Table A presents the standard set of stubs used in many of the tables for developing countries as well as the proportion of developing country GDP, exports of goods and services, and indebtedness accounted for by the groups in question. Further details on the classification scheme are given below.

Table A.

Developing Countries: Shares of Various Subgroups in Aggregate GDP, Exports of Goods and Services, and Debt Outstanding, 1980

(In percent)

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In percent of outstanding debt of capital importing developing countries.

Excluding Nigeria and South Africa.

The basic distinction between industrial countries and developing countries, adopted by the Fund in December 1979 and utilized in IFS for the March 1980 and subsequent issues, remains unchanged. Industrial countries comprise:

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The developing countries include all other Fund members (as of July 1, 1985) together with certain essentially autonomous dependent territories for which adequate statistics are available.1 The regional breakdowns of data for “developing countries” conform to the regional classification used in IFS. It should be noted that, in this classification, Egypt and Libyan Arab Jamahiriya are part of the Middle East, not Africa.

The first analytical criterion used to group developing countries is by predominant export category. Four categories are distinguished: fuel (SITC 3); other primary commodities (SITC 0, 1, 2, 4, and diamonds and gemstones); manufactures (SITC 5 to 8 less diamonds and gemstones); and “services and remittances.”

On the basis of data for 1980, countries are assigned to that commodity grouping which accounts for 50 percent or more of their exports. Specifically, countries are assigned to the “services and remittances” category if their receipts on these transactions account for at least half of their exports of goods and services. If countries do not meet this criterion, they are assigned to that trade category (of the three listed above) which accounts for at least half of their total merchandise exports.2

Given these definitions, the fuel exporters comprise the following countries:

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The primary product exporters, that is, countries whose exports of agricultural and mineral primary products other than fuel accounted for over 50 percent of their total exports in 1980, comprise:

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The exporters of manufactures (i.e., those countries or areas whose exports of manufactures accounted in 1980 for over 50 percent of total exports) include:

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The service and remittance countries, that is, those countries whose receipts from services (such as tourism) and private transfers (such as workers remittances) amount to at least 50 percent of their exports of goods and services, comprise:

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The last three categories taken together are referred to as the “non-fuel exporters.”

A second set of analytical groupings of developing countries is based on financial criteria. These pertain only to capital importing developing countries, which, for present purposes, include all developing countries except the eight Middle Eastern oil exporters for which external debt statistics are either not available or are small in relation to external assets. Because of these exclusions, disaggregations of the capital importing developing country group do not include data for the fuel exporters. Moreover, coverage of the Middle Eastern region in these cases is limited to the “non-oil” countries of the region.

Within the group of capital importing developing countries and areas, two types of distinctions are made. The first distinguishes among countries and areas on the basis of their predominant type of creditor. Market borrowers are defined as those countries which obtained at least two thirds of their external borrowings from 1978 to 1982 from commercial creditors. The group includes:

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Among the market borrowers, a subgroup of major borrowers is distinguished. This group comprises those seven countries with the largest total outstanding external indebtedness. These countries are:

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Official borrowers comprise those countries, except China and India, which obtained two thirds or more of their external borrowings from 1978 to 1982 from official creditors. The countries are:

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China and India, which satisfy the criterion for this grouping, have been excluded because of the twin circumstances that these two countries, first, are large enough to significantly affect the group composites and, second, have experienced developments that are at variance with those of most other countries in the group. China and India are, therefore, implicitly grouped with the capital importing developing countries whose external borrowing in 1978-82 was more or less evenly divided between official and commercial creditors.

A second financial distinction is based on whether countries have or have not experienced debt-servicing difficulties in the recent past. Countries that have experienced debt-servicing difficulties are defined as those countries which incurred external payments arrears during the period 1981 to 1983 or rescheduled their debt during the period from 1981 to mid-1984 as reported in the relevant issues of the Fund’s Annual Report on Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions. Countries classified as not having experienced debt-servicing difficulties are defined as all other capital importing developing countries.

Several other analytical groups are also used in the report. One of these is the group of low-income countries, which comprises 43 countries whose per capita GDP, as estimated by the World Bank, did not exceed the equivalent of $410 in 1980. The countries in this group are:

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References to the small or smaller low-income countries refer to the above group less China and India.

Reference is also made to subgroups that reflect a combination of regional and analytical criteria. The most common of these groups are: (1) sub-Saharan Africa (excluding Nigeria), which comprises all African countries except Algeria, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tunisia; (2) Middle Eastern oil exporters which includes:

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and (3) the group of non-oil Middle Eastern countries which refers to all Middle Eastern countries except the eight oil exporters listed above, namely:

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Finally, many of the tables present data on the developing countries grouped in accordance with the former classification categories. In this system, the developing countries were divided into two groups—“oil exporting countries” and “non-oil developing countries.” The countries included under the heading oil exporting countries3 are:

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Among the “non-oil developing countries,” four analytical subgroups of countries were distinguished. These subgroupings were based primarily on the character of the countries’ economic activity and on the predominant composition of their exports. Since the large “non-oil” group in the basic classification included some countries that had significant production and/or exports of oil, one of the analytic subgroups shown separately comprised countries (outside the main oil exporting group mentioned above) whose oil exports exceeded their oil imports in most years of the 1970s. The countries classified in the subgroup net oil exporters were:

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Within the great majority of developing countries and areas that were net importers of oil (net oil importers), three subroups were distinguished. The first was major exporters of manufactures which included:

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A second subgroup was low-income countries, the same group as that of the same name defined above. The third subgroup, other net oil importers, comprised middle-income countries (according to the World Bank’s estimates), the majority of which exported mainly primary commodities. The countries in this subgroup comprised all non-oil developing countries that were not included among “net oil exporters,” “major exporters of manufactures,” or “low-income countries.”

Except where otherwise specifically indicated, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and other non-member countries of Eastern Europe, Cuba, and North Korea are excluded from the following tables. Also, it has not been possible to include in the tables a number of small countries or territories for which trade and payments data are not available.

Output and Employment

Table 1.

World Output, 1967-861

(Changes, in percent)

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Real GDP (or GNP) for industrial and developing countries and real net material product (NMP) for other countries. Composites for the country groups are averages of percentage changes for individual countries weighted by the average U.S. dollar value of their respective GDPs (GNPs or NMPs where applicable) over the preceding three years. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the valuation of the composite NMP of the other countries, they have been assigned—somewhat arbitrarily—a weight of 15 percent in the calculation of the growth of world output. For classification of countries in groups shown here, see the Introduction to this appendix. Estimates do not include China for the period prior to 1978.

Compound annual rates of change.

The U.S.S.R. and other countries of Eastern Europe that are not members of the Fund. The forecasts for these countries have not been updated from those given in April.

Table 2.

Industrial Countries: Changes in Real GNP and Total Domestic Demand, 1967-861

(In percent)

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Composites for the country groups are averages of percentage changes for individual countries weighted by the average U.S. dollar value of their respective GNPs over the preceding three years. For classification of countries in groups shown here, see the Introduction to this appendix.

Compound annual rates of change.

GDP at market prices.

Average of expenditure, income, and output estimates of GDP at factor cost.

Table 3.

Industrial Countries: Changes in Components of Real GNP, 1967-861

(In percent)

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Composites for country groups are averages of percentage changes in real terms for individual countries weighted by the average U.S. dollar value of their respective GNPs over the preceding three years. For classification of countries in groups shown here, see the Introduction to this appendix.

Compound annual rates of change.

Changes expressed as a percentage of GNP in the preceding period.

Table 4.

Industrial Countries: Employment and Unemployment, 1967-861

(In percent)

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The figures in the table are not comparable among countries since they are based on the differing labor force definitions and concepts used by the respective national statistical agencies. For classification of countries in groups shown here, see the Introduction to this appendix.

Composites for the country groups are averages of percentage changes for individual countries weighted by the average U.S. dollar value of their respective GNPs over the preceding three years.

National unemployment rates weighted by labor force in the respective countries.

Figures for 1967 to 1976 have been adjusted by the staff to allow for a discontinuity in Italian labor force statistics.

Table 5.

Developing Countries: Growth of Real GDP, 1967-861, 2

(In percent)

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For classification of countries in groups shown here, see the Introduction to this appendix. China is excluded prior to 1978.

Except where otherwise indicated, arithmetic averages of country growth rates weighted by the average U.S. dollar value of GDPs over the preceding three years.

Compound annual rates of change.

Excluding Nigeria and South Africa.