1504.0 - Methodological News, Sep 2008  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 23/09/2008   
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ABS Decommissions the ANZSPC as a Statistical Standard for Products

The ABS recently decommissioned the Australian and New Zealand Standard Product Classification (ANZSPC) as the Australian statistical standard for products. The ANZSPC was produced in 2001 as a collaboration between the ABS and Statistics New Zealand. The ANZSPC was intended to become the statistical standard for the collection and presentation of product statistics in both countries. However, recent reviews of product classifications, focusing on the use of ANZSPC within the ABS, found that:

    • ANZSPC has not been adopted widely within the ABS, rather a range of collection-specific classifications have been developed;
    • a range of product classifications are required to account for different conceptual bases such as industry of origin, end use and material composition; and
    • ANZSPC is no longer internationally comparable given the impending release of Central Product Classification (CPC) V2.0.

Furthermore, consultation with Statistics New Zealand revealed that the adoption of ANZSPC throughout New Zealand has also been nominal, therefore decommissioning the ANZSPC is seen as a logical and practical approach by Statistics New Zealand.

The ABS plans to adopt the international CPC V2.0 as the overarching framework for product classifications, that is, product classifications used within the ABS will concord with CPC V2.0 to at least 3 digit level. The CPC is a multi-purpose classification covering all goods and services and recent developments to increase the level of detail and comparability with other international standards have positioned it to fulfil the function of an overarching reference product classification for Australia and New Zealand.

For more information, please contact economic.classifications@abs.gov.au.