Institutional units are assigned to an institutional sector by reference to their attributes of economic objectives, function, behaviour, control and ownership.
The classification is based on two criteria:
For example producer enterprises operate to produce a physical output in order to generate a profit. Financial intermediaries provide financial services in order to generate a profit and households consume goods and services and they also supply labour.
Sometimes an intermediate classification of business type based mainly on legal character is used as an aid in the process of classifying by institutional sector.
Institutional sector is a hierarchical classification of four levels. Level 1 of the classification has six categories, level 2 has 13 categories, level 3 has 19 categories and level 4 has 29 categories.
The full classification is available in the 'Available Files' section on the main page.