At its 51<sup>st</sup> session, in 2020, the United Nations Statistical Commission
(UNSC) started the process of revision of the 2008 System of National Accounts
(SNA) for adoption by the Commission in 2025 (“Towards 2025 SNA”; see website
UNSTAT 2).
This is a periodic review of the system at an international level, to update the accounts
and introduce into the system new challenging topics, such as ‘Sustainable
development’, which require systematisation of the relevant data to achieve the level of
coherence needed for policy purposes. The views of the UN, the EU and other
countries, such as India, are reported in this chapter.
After recalling the key role of SNA in official statistics, the revision process at the UN
level is resumed, with a focus on the main extension, led by Eurostat, on the
environmental dimension of sustainability.
The chapter concludes with some remarks on the prospects of this extension for the
Indian subcontinent and the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf.
Keywords: Beyond GDP, Data, Digitalization, Environmental-economic accounting, National accounts, Official statistics, Revision process, Sustainable development.
