Belgium - Real Investment

The World Bank Development Indicators is the premium annual statistics of the World Bank which compiles data on development. The WDI contains over 900 indicators per country and covers topics including BOP, business, demographics, external debt, education, tourism, tax, etc. Geo coverage is over 150 countries. Series are annual from as early as 1960.

In an attempt to create cross country comparable datasets the World Bank adopted strict methodologies for their quantitative analysis to create the World Development Indicators (WDI). These methods include using averages and growth rates to calculate the range of average, and least squares growth rates.

Income and regional totals are also estimated by identifying country classifications for socio-economic variables. Please note many developing countries have missing data. The WDI has also instituted grouping strategies for regions, income, and lending. This helps to maintain conditions when researching developing countries.

Many of the WDI concepts are shares or ratios based on a specific population. For these, the universe is expressed as the last phrase of the text-descriptor (prefaced with the word "As") and the unit-descriptor is reduced to "%", for example:

World development indicators: Account at a financial institution - Male - As pct. of ages 15+, (%)

Some of the concepts use standard measurements but non-standard unit-descriptors:

• current US$
• BOP, current US$
• constant 2005 US%
• annual % growth
• current LCU
• constant LCU
• constant 2011 PPP

Many of the WDI concepts use specialized measurements outside the typical run of Data Buffet series, and require specialized unit-descriptor metadata. These include:

• Metric tonne = (Ths. kg)
• kt = (Mil. kg)
• (million ton-km)
• Percent change from 1990 = (% Y/1990)
• Per 100 thousand population = (# per 100 Ths. pop.)
• (% of GNI)
• (1=yes; 0=no)
• (1=low to 6=high)
• (1=extremely inefficient to 7=extremely efficient)
• (0=less disclosure to 10=more disclosure)
• (SIPRI trend indicator values)

Data are updated at least once a year, with possible interim updates throughout the year. Revisions can be extensive and cover the entire history.

Previously available and published data can be removed by the World Bank if quality or integrity of the data is questioned. For more detail on what has been removed, revised and added please see the Revision history from from the World Bank.

ETC means that series includes any statistical discrepancy in the use of resources relative to the supply of resources.

Due to redistribution restrictions imposed on Moody's Analytics the series shown by the World Bank Restricted Data are not made extracted on Data Buffet.

New Labor Froce Survey Methodolog: http://www.ilo.org/ilostat-files/Documents/LFEP2017.pdf.