The United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) at its fifty-third session in 2022 “recommended the revision of the Classification of the Functions of Government (COFOG) and an assessment of whether changes are required in the other classifications of expenditure according to purpose.” (
Decision 53/125(i) of E/CN.3/2022/41).
The update of COFOG will be carried out under the auspices of the United Nations Committee of Experts on International Statistical Classifications (UNCEISC) and its Task Team on the Revision of COFOG (TT-COFOG). It is anticipated that the update will be completed by March 2027.
The primary objectives of the TT-COFOG are to develop a revised version of the COFOG, including the structure, explanatory notes and correspondences between the revised COFOG and the 1999 version of COFOG. In addition, the task team will provide an assessment on whether changes are required in other classifications according to purpose in the context of the COFOG revision and make a recommendation to UNCEISC.
The revision process of COFOG will be undertaken in coordination with the update process of other macroeconomic standards, including the update of the Government Financial Statistics Manual (GFSM), System of National Accounts (SNA) and the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) Central Framework.
The Global Consultation on the Initial List of Issues for the Update of COFOG is being conducted with countries, international/regional organizations and broader user communities to collect feedback on the initial list of issues which were identified by the TT-COFOG. The feedback from the global consultation will contribute to the finalization of the list of issues which will be presented to the 56th session of the UNSC in 2025.
What is COFOG?
The classification of the functions of government (COFOG) is a classification of transactions designed to apply to general government and its subsectors. In the current version of the COFOG classification, there are ten divisions in the classification as follows:
01 General public services
02 Defence
03 Public order and safety
04 Economic affairs
05 Environmental protection
06 Housing and community amenities
07 Health
08 Recreation, culture and religion
09 Education
10 Social protection
These divisions are broken down into more details in groups, which again are broken down into classes. At the most detailed level, classes, whether the expenditure are being related to collective services or individual services are indicated. In practice, in many groups there is only one class, hence group and class are then equal.
Following the conceptual principles, all of divisions 01 to 06 are collective services, as are groups 07.5 and 07.6 of division 07 - Health, groups 08.3 to 08.6 of division 08 - Recreation, culture and religion, groups 09.7 and 09.8 of division 9 - Education, and groups 10.8 and 10.9 of division 10 - Social protection. These groups cover expenditures on general administration, regulation, research and so on. The remaining parts of the classification refer to expenditure related to individual services. However, the COFOG classification is periodically reviewed and the precise mapping of the COFOG classification to collective and individual services may also be updated during these revisions.
(
Draft 2025 SNA, paras. 10.101-10.102)
