CPC constitutes a comprehensive classification of all goods and services. CPC presents categories for all products that can be the object of domestic or international transactions or that can be entered into stocks. It includes products that are an output of economic activity, including transportable goods, non-transportable goods and services. CPC, as a standard central product classification, was developed to serve as an instrument for assembling and tabulating all kinds of statistics requiring product detail. Such statistics may cover production, intermediate and final consumption, capital formation, foreign trade or prices. They may refer to commodity flows, stocks or balances and may be compiled in the context of input/output tables, balance of payments and other analytical presentations. The CPC classifies products based on the physical characteristics of goods or on the nature of the services rendered. CPC was developed primarily to enhance harmonization among various fields of economic and related statistics and to strengthen the role of national accounts as an instrument for the coordination of economic statistics. It provides a basis for recompiling basic statistics from their original classifications into a standard classification for analytical use.
