About the ASR

About the Annual Statistical Report on UN Procurement (ASR)

The Annual Statistical Report on United Nations Procurement (ASR) provides an overview of procurement in the United Nations (UN) system in support of its operations, projects and programmes. The ASR was first presented in 1984 and was prepared by the Inter-Agency Procurement Services Office (IAPSO) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and submitted to the 39th session of the General Assembly. By Resolution 39/220, the General Assembly established a need for regular reporting of this type of information and encouraged organizations of the UN system to participate in this important exercise. Since 2008, the report has been compiled by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS).

The ASR portal publishes data collected from UN organizations. It includes a range of information about the categories of goods and services procured by the UN system, as well as the countries from which these goods and services were procured. There is also analysis of sustainable procurement indicators, as well as collaborative procurement within the UN system.

UNOPS is grateful to participating organizations for their continuous support and contributions that make the ASR possible. UNOPS continually strives to improve and refine the report to better meet the expectations and objectives of the UN Member States, donors, UN organizations and the business community.

The information presented here is generally applicable to the ASR data presented online across all years. For detail specific to each year, refer to the introduction section of the relevant report.

Procurement data

Procurement includes all acquisition through purchase or lease of real property, goods or other products (including intellectual property), works or services, as defined by the UN procurement practitioner’s handbook.

UNOPS relies on participating UN organizations in the compilation and reporting of the statistics. Where the report refers to procurement by the UN or by UN organizations, it refers to the procurement activities of these organizations.

UNOPS requests statistical data on procurement of goods and services for operational activities from UN organizations in the form of data on purchase orders raised in a calendar year. While UN organizations may have different systems and methodologies for recording and reporting on procurement data individually, for the purposes of the ASR, a common definition of procurement is used and data is collected in a standardized format. Some organizations may therefore publish procurement statistics that differ from those published in the ASR. For example UNDP, in addition to its own direct procurement portfolio, includes National Implementation Modality (NIM) - a distinct activity of UNDP - in its own procurement data . However, NIM is not included in the UNDP’s statistics for the ASR. Further, some organizations have limitations on the level of detail they are able to provide.

Participating organizations upload procurement data into an online system, hosted by UNGM, where it is subject to an initial verification, then UNOPS conducts detailed data quality and consistency checks to ensure that the data is comparable across organizations and years. Some organizations prepare data on behalf of others (for example, if they share a reporting system). The organizations are ultimately responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the data they submit.

Procurement volume and currency

Purchase orders and contracts for services are reported by contract amount and not by expenditures incurred. Many organizations are unable to report on actual expenditures due to technical limitations.

Organizations are able to submit data in one of three currencies: United States dollars (USD), Euros (EUR) or Swiss Francs (CHF). The report uses only United States dollars. Where organizations have submitted data in Euros or Swiss Francs, these values are converted to US dollars using an average exchange rate, based on operational rates of exchange published by the United Nations Treasury.

Most participating organizations operate across multiple geographies and procure in multiple currencies. Each organization determines how it converts from the original currency into currency reported for the ASR.

There may be slight differences between sums of numbers presented in tables and figures in the report and the given totals. This is due to rounding.

Procurement by categories

To enable reporting on categories of goods and services across all UN organizations, participating organizations are requested to provide procurement data based on the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code® (UNSPSC) standard, at the most detailed level possible. The UNSPSC is a publicly available multi-sector standard for classification of goods and services. It is a four-level category hierarchy – the four-levels are segment, family, class and commodity. Minor adaptations have been made for the purposes of presentation in the ASR – further details are provided in the written report.

Most organizations are able to provide data at UNSPSC family level, the second level in the UNSPSC hierarchy; however, some organizations are limited to providing information only at UNSPSC segment level – the top level of the hierarchy. When filtering at a lower level of the hierarchy, data only available at a higher level is shown as ‘No data’ in the dashboards. In some limited cases, organizations are unable to provide information on the categorization of goods and services procured, in which case this data is reported as unspecified goods and unspecified services.

In addition, for the ASR a further high-level classification denoted "Sectors" is used.

More information about categories and sectors in the ASR

Procurement by countries

Throughout the ASR, the terms ’country’ or ’countries’ refer to countries and territories. Unless otherwise stated, they refer to supplier countries reported by the submitting organization (usually the country where the supplier is registered).

Country names, as well as their designation by geographic region, follow the Standard Country or Area Codes for Statistical Use, referred to as the ‘M49 standard’ (prepared by the Statistics Division of the United Nations Secretariat). There may be some minor discrepancies between printed reports and data available online due to changes in the reporting methodology over time.

For analytical purposes, the ASR uses the country categorizations of least developed countries (LDCs), landlocked developing countries (LLDCs) and small island developing states (SIDS), following the M49 standard as current at the end of the reporting period. There is no established convention for the definition of countries and areas that are considered LLDCs or SIDS. The current composition of countries and areas in the LLDC and SIDS groups was set at the beginning of the Sustainable Development Goals reporting period based on various definitions available at the time. 

The designations employed do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the UN concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The assignment of countries or areas to specific groupings is for statistical convenience and does not imply any assumption regarding political or other affiliation of countries or territories by the UN.

Where organizations are unable to provide supplier country information, it is reported under ‘Unspecified Countries.’ Some tables may refer to "Remaining countries" - this includes procurement from non-member states and procurement where the region of the supplier is known but not the precise country. For analysis where comparisons are made between supplier country and total procurement (for example, the proportion of procurement from developing countries as a percentage of procurement from all countries), adjustments have been made to only include data where the supplier country is known.

More information about the distribution of countries and territories in the ASR

Use the form below to provide feedback to the ASR team within UNOPS. Alternatively, send an email to: asr@unops.org

This site uses interactive dashboards to present ASR data. If you are having difficulty viewing the information, please check your browser, browser settings or local content restrictions. Ensure you're using the most recent version of a supported browser. More information on system requirements for dashboards can be found here. Where you require support, please contact the ASR team below. You can also refer to the ASR report document.

Most dashboards have click-filtering enabled, so you can click on any dashboard element to filter the data shown on the rest of the dashboard. On some dashboards, there are additional filter menus which allow you to explore the data.

Exporting data

Dashboards can be downloaded as a PDF and data from dashboard tables and charts can be downloaded in CSV, Excel or Google Sheets format. In order to access these functionalities, you may need to be logged into a Google account. You can log in or create an account here. It is possible to download aggregated information as presented in the dashboards, but not the entire dataset. 

To download a dashboard page as PDF, click the "Looker Studio" button at the bottom right of any dashboard, then click the "Share" icon on the top left and select "Download Report". 

To export data in CSV, Excel or Google Sheets format, right click on a chart or table to view the available options and click "Export".