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24 November 2003

2003 quest. - Summary of question 14 responses

Question 14 from the "questions" document: Do you agree to the aggregation of previous divisions for food, beverage and tobacco manufacturing and for textile wearing apparel and leather manufacturing, as shown in the ISIC structure draft? -see divisions 3.1 and 3.2 in section III.3 of the ISIC structure draft

Summary of responses to question 14: Of the 47 replies to this question, 43 were in favour of aggregating food, beverage and tobacco manufacturing on the one hand and combining manufacturing of textiles, wearing apparel with leather manufacturing on the other. Those in favour postulated unanimously that the former divisions must remain identifiable on a lower level, i.e. not to hamper continuity. France pointed out that these aggregations could be done as an intermediate level between top-level and Division level (see also Q-30). Brazil only agreed to the aggregation of divisions 15 and 16, but had reservations with merging 17, 18, 19 because of too big differences in production processes and input, business size and capital ratio (similar arguments from Japan). Argentina on the other hand agreed to merging divisions 17-19, but not to 15 and 16 which was undermined by the size of individual industries that showed that Division 15 is responsible for 10% of the economy and 31% of Manufacturing in Argentina and that for the reason of a balance rather a disaggregation for division 15 should be done (see also S-03). Cuba wanted to see tobacco apart from food manufacturing and Australia had reservations, but replied that re-aggregating their classification would be possible to obtain the ISIC breakdown. Action required: The proposal of joining food manufacturing (ISIC 3.1, Div. 15) with tobacco (ISIC 3.1, Div. 16) and divisions 17-19 (Manufacture of textiles, wearing apparel, leather) was accepted by the majority of countries.