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The International Comparison Program (ICP)

The ICP is the world's largest global statistical initiative for estimating purchasing power parities (PPPs) to compare economic outputs, standards of living, and relative price levels across economies.

The ICP entails estimating PPPs and related macro-economic aggregates of economies for comparison. The World Bank coordinates global-level ICP, while ADB covers the program’s Asia and the Pacific component.

Results of the 2021 ICP for Asia and the Pacific

The Asian Development Bank released the estimates of purchasing power parities (PPPs) and PPP based macro-economic aggregates of economies for the 21 participating economies in the 2021 International Comparison Program for Asia and the Pacific. Detailed tables are now available on this website and in https://www.adb.org/what-we-do/data/icp. Revised results of the previous benchmark year, 2017, are also available in these sources. Analyses of the key results from the 2021 ICP in the region can be explored in the forthcoming report on the 2021 International Comparison Program in Asia and the Pacific.

The 2021 ICP in Asia and the Pacific was coordinated by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), as the regional implementing agency. ADB worked closely with 21 participating economies of the region and the ICP global office at the World Bank, under the guidance of the ICP Technical Advisory Group and the Regional Advisory Board for Asia and the Pacific. The 21 economies participating in the 2021 ICP in Asia and the Pacific are Bangladesh; Bhutan; Brunei Darussalam; Cambodia; the People’s Republic of China; Fiji; Hong Kong, China; India; Indonesia; the Lao People’s Democratic Republic; Malaysia; Maldives; Mongolia; Nepal; Pakistan; Philippines; Singapore; Sri Lanka; Taipei,China; Thailand; and Viet Nam.

The 2021 ICP for Asia and the Pacific provides economists, national policy makers, international organizations, and other stakeholders with PPPs of currencies, price levels, and real and per capita expenditures for GDP and its several expenditure components for 21 participating economies, with Hong Kong, China as the reference economy and Hong Kong dollar as the reference currency. The full set of results for the 2021 cycle is available online and includes data for GDP and 44 sub-aggregates along with the revised results for the 2017 ICP benchmark. The revised 2017 ICP results are for 22 economies that participated in the 2017 ICP cycle. These include the above 21 economies that participated in the 2021 ICP and Myanmar.

The 2021 ICP in Asia and the Pacific mainly followed the methodology used in the 2017 cycle, with one innovation: a new methodology developed by ADB for comparing price levels and real expenditures in housing. With this methodology, Asia and the Pacific moved to the standard ICP approaches for housing comparisons based on housing rental and quantity data, suitably adopted to account for substantial differences in quality of dwellings across regional economies. It represents a notable advancement from the ad hoc reference volume approach used in previous rounds of ICP in the region. Following extensive testing and endorsement by the ICP Technical Advisory Group and the Regional Advisory Board, this method was implemented in the 2021 cycle and in the revisions of the 2017 results. Additional relevant information in each table is available in the notes sheet.

PPPs are statistical estimates and are subject to sampling and other measurement errors. Caution needs to be exercised in using PPP-converted real expenditures for ranking of economies when the differences in real expenditures between economies are small. Further, PPPs are meant for spatial comparisons of real expenditures for the given benchmark year and should not be used to directly make temporal comparisons. PPPs should also not be used to make any judgment on the overvaluation or undervaluation of a currency.

The successful completion of the 2021 cycle is largely due to the unwavering commitment of implementing agencies in the participating economies, and the innovative strategies adopted by ADB to coordinate the program and address data quality concerns through rigorous and transparent data validations.

Browse 2021 ICP data
Download 2021 ICP summary results table

Summary Data

2017 GROSS DOMESTIC PRODUCT

When estimated from expenditure side, GDP is total value of the final consumption of households, nonprofit institution serving households, and general government, gross capital formation plus balance of exports and imports.

Subregions:

Economy