National accounts or national account systems (NAS) are the implementation of complete and consistent accounting techniques for measuring the economic activity of a nation. These include detailed underlying measures that rely on double-entry accounting. By design, such accounting makes the totals on both sides of an account equal even though they each measure different characteristics, for example production and the income from it. As a method, the subject is termed national accounting or, more generally, social accounting. Stated otherwise, national accounts as systems may be distinguished from the economic data associated with those systems. While sharing many common principles with business accounting, national accounts are based on economic concepts. One conceptual construct for representing flows of all economic transactions that take place in an economy is a social accounting matrix with accounts in each respective row-column entry.
National accounting has developed in tandem with macroeconomics from the 1930s with its relation of aggregate demand to total output through interaction of such broad expenditure categories as consumption and investment.Economic data from national accounts are also used for empirical analysis of economic growth and development.
The United Nations System of National Accounts (often abbreviated as SNA or UNSNA) is an international standard system of national accounts, the first international standard being published in 1953. Handbooks have been released for the 1968 revision, the 1993 revision, and the 2008 revision.
The aim of UNSNA is to provide an integrated, complete system accounts enabling international comparisons of all significant economic activity. The suggestion is that individual countries use UNSNA as a guide in constructing their own national accounting systems, to promote international comparability. However, adherence to an international standard is not, and cannot, be rigidly enforced, and the systems used by some countries (for example, France, United States and China) differ significantly from the standard. In itself this is not a major problem, provided that each system provides sufficient data which can be reworked to compile national accounts according to the United Nations standard.
System of National Accounts refers to the specific set of accounts that a nation uses for national economic reporting. The concept is analogous to the Chart of accounts used by an enterprise to classify each transaction, which enables aggregation for financial reporting. National economic reporting however has major differences.
Since enterprises sell intermediate products to other enterprises who use them in their products (for example steel makers sell finished steel to automobile makers, who in turn use that steel (and many other inputs), and sell finished automobiles), a nation can't simply sum up the sales of all enterprises located in that country to arrive at a meaningful measure of national output. Without adjustment, continuing the simplified example, the value of the steel would be counted twice, once as it was sold to the automaker, and a second time when the car containing the steel was sold to a consumer.
National Accounting (based on Output) starts with enterprise financial statement data, but also adds significant amounts of information not contained in any audited financial statement such as structural information provided by trade organizations, periodic surveys, estimates interpolated from other direct measurements such as electricity usage, etc. The System of National Accounts guides classification and use of those various and varied data streams to facilitate aggregation and economic reporting at the national level.
The United Nations System consists of the United Nations, its subsidiary organs (including the separately-administered funds and programmes), the specialized agencies, and affiliated organizations. The executive heads of some of the United Nations System organizations and the World Trade Organization, which is not formally part of the United Nations System, have seats on the United Nations System Chief Executives' Board for Coordination (CEB). This body, chaired by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, meets twice a year to co-ordinate the work of the organizations of the United Nations System.
The United Nations System includes the United Nations and its subsidiary bodies (such as the separately-administered funds and programmes, research and training institutes, and other subsidiary entities), specialized agencies, and affiliated organizations. Some of the organizations of the United Nations System predate the founding of the United Nations in 1945 and were inherited after the dissolution of the League of Nations.
Skin color, racism, and prejudice
This world will never change
The roots of the hate too deep in our lives
And we have too much pain
I see it
I was born for what I was born
And you can't bring me down
I don't believe in your society
I only believe in God
I feel it