The International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC) is the international reference classification of productive activities.
Its main purpose is to provide a set of activity categories that can be utilized for the collection and reporting of statistics according to such activities.
Since the adoption of the original version of ISIC in 1948, the majority of countries around the world have used ISIC as their national activity classification or have
developed national classifications derived from ISIC. ISIC has therefore provided guidance to countries in developing national activity classifications and has become
an important tool for comparing statistical data on economic activities at the international level. Wide use has been made of ISIC, both nationally and internationally, in
classifying data according to kind of economic activity in the fields of economic and social statistics, such as for statistics on national accounts, demography of enterprises,
employment and others. In addition, ISIC is increasingly used for non-statistical purposes.
