OECD – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

OECD – Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy from around the world to:

• Support sustainable economic growth
• Boost employment
• Raise living standards
• Maintain financial stability
• Assist other countries' economic development
• Contribute to growth in world trade  

The OECD collects data, monitors trends, analyses them and forecasts economic developments and researches social changes or evolving patterns in trade, environment, etc. For more than 40 years, the OECD has been one of the world's largest and most reliable sources of comparable statistics, i.e. economic and social data.      

Operation of the OECD
The decision-making body of the OECD is the Council, which brings together representatives of each of the 30 member countries and of the European Commission. The Council adopts decisions by consent of all member countries. The OECD is led by the Secretariat whose headquarters are in Paris. Its main task is to co-ordinate the work of OECD committees. The OECD has over 200 committees and working groups for individual fields; working groups are the responsibility of individual directorates. Thus the Committee on Statistics is directed by the Statistics Directorate.