About the data
Definitions
Data sources
An adequate and reliable supply of electrical power is an essential ingredient for modern economic development. Expanding the supply of electricity to meet the growing demand of increasingly urbanized and industrialized economies is one of the great challenges facing developing countries. To meet this challenge without incurring unacceptable social, economic, and environmental costs often requires institutional, regulatory, and financial reforms to improve the power sector's performance.
An economy's production of electricity is a basic indicator of its size and level of development. Although some countries export electrical power, most production is for domestic consumption. Power production data do not reflect power distribution losses through faulty equipment and poorly designed systems and illegal diversions of power by consumers. Nor do they capture the reliability of supplies, including frequency of outages, breakdowns, and load factors.
Data on electrical power production are collected from national energy agencies by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and adjusted by the IEA to meet international definitions. Adjustments are made, for example, to account for electricity production by self-producers (establishments that, in addition to their main activities, generate electricity wholly or partly for their own use). Self-generation by small entrepreneurs and households can be substantial in some countries because of unreliable public power sources or remoteness, however, and in these cases may not be adequately reflected in these adjustments.
Telecommunications is at the center of an information economy. Governments that realize this have integrated telecommunications policies with their macroeconomic strategies. National performance indicators for the telecommunications sector can include measures of supply and demand, quality of service, productivity, economic and financial performance, capital investment, and tariffs.
Until a decade ago the number of mainlines accurately reflected the full capacity of the telephone system. But the advent—and rapid spread—of cellular telephones has changed the picture. (See table 5.14 for estimates of cellular, mobile phone subscribers.) Demand in the telecommunications sector is measured by the sum of mainlines and the number of registered applicants for new connections. But in some countries the list of registered applicants does not indicate the real current pending demand. There is often hidden or suppressed demand, reflecting a situation of acute short supply in which many potential applicants have been discouraged from applying for telephone service. And in some cases waiting lists may overstate demand as a result of applicants placing their names on the list several times to improve their chances.
International telecommunications is a fundamental link to the global economy. As telecommunications tariffs have declined with new technical advances, an oversupply of international lines, and increased competition, international telephone traffic has rapidly expanded. Worldwide, telephone traffic has grown 16 percent a year for the past 10 years—about four times faster than global GDP.
Definitions
• Electric power production refers to gross production in kilowatt-hours by private companies, cooperative organizations, local or regional authorities, government organizations, and self-producers. It includes consumption by station auxiliaries, any losses in the transformers that are considered integral parts of the station, and electric energy produced by pumping installations. It covers electricity generated from all primary sources of energy—coal, oil, gas, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, wind, tide and wave, and combustible renewables—where data are available.
• Electric power transmission and distribution losses include losses in transmission between sources of supply and points of distribution and in the distribution to consumers, including pilferage. Production less transmission and distribution losses, own-use, and transformation losses is equal to end-use electricity consumption.
• Telephone mainlines refer to telephone lines connecting a customer's equipment (such as a telephone or facsimile machine) to the public switched telephone network. A mainline is normally identified by a unique number that is the one billed. Data are presented here as mainlines per 1,000 people; this is a measure of telephone density or penetration.
• Waiting time shows the approximate number of years applicants must wait for a telephone line. It is calculated by dividing the number of applicants on the waiting list by the average number of mainlines added per year over the past three years.
• Outgoing traffic refers to the telephone traffic, measured in minutes per subscriber, that originated in the country with a destination outside the country.
• Average price per call is the cost of a three-minute peak rate call from any country to the United States.
Data on electricity production and losses are from the IEA's Energy Statistics and Balances of Non-OECD Countries 1993–94, the IEA's Energy Statistics of OECD Countries 1993–94, and the United Nations Energy Statistics Yearbook. Telecommunications data come from the International Telecommunication Union's World Telecommunication Development Report and Direction of Traffic database.
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