A database user manual for SPEED: Statistics on public expenditures for economic development

Abstract

This document provides an overview of the coverage of the new release of the 2019 version of the Statistics on Public Expenditures for Economic Development (SPEED) database. Key issues related to currency redenomination and changes in definition of sector expenditure and how they are addressed to ensure cross-country and intertemporal comparability are presented. The database covers 164 countries from 1980 to 2017 for eleven sectors: agriculture, communication, education, defense, health, mining, social protection, fuel and energy, transport, transport and communication (as a group) and other. Indicators reported include percentage of sector expenditure in total expenditure, percentage of total
expenditure to total gross domestic product, and per capita sector and total expenditure in constant prices. Significant effort has been put into recording the sources, methods, and issues related to each individual data point so as to allow for easy replication or verification of any data value.