WASHINGTON, April 29, 2014 – The International Comparison Program (ICP)
released new data today showing that the world economy produced goods and
services worth over $90 trillion in 2011, and that almost half of the
world’s total output came from low and middle income countries.
Under the authority of the United Nations Statistical Commission, the 2011
round of ICP covered 199 economies – the most extensive effort to measure
Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) across countries ever. ICP 2011 estimates
benefited from a number of methodological improvements over past efforts to
calculate PPPs.
The ICP’s principal outputs are PPPs for 2011 and estimates of PPP-based
gross domestic product (GDP) and its major components in aggregate and per
capita terms. When converting national economic measures (e.g. GDP), into a
common currency, PPPs are a more direct measure of what money can buy than
exchange rates.
ICP implementation was led and coordinated by the ICP Global Office, hosted
by the World Bank, in partnership with regional agencies overseeing
activities in eight geographic regions: Africa, Asia and the Pacific,
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Latin America, the Caribbean,
Western Asia, Pacific Islands, and the countries of the regular PPP program
managed by the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat)
and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). In
addition, two “singleton” economies, Georgia and Iran, participated in
bilateral exercises with partner economies, without being part of any
regional comparisons.