About COFOG
The Classification of the Functions of General Government (COFOG) was developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and published by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). It can be applied to government expenditure and net acquisition of non-financial assets (outlays). COFOG has three levels of detail: Divisions, Groups and Classes. Divisions could be considered as the general objectives of general government, while groups and classes detail the means by which these general objectives are achieved. The initials “CS” or “IS” follow the title of each class in brackets to indicate whether the services produced by general government units and included in this class are collective or individual services and therefore whether individual and collective final consumption expenditure should be recorded in the respective functions. This is in line with the provisions of ESA 2010 paragraphs 3.104-3.107.
This chapter reproduces the description of the COFOG classification published by the UNSD. To this description, COFOG TF has added comments on the ESA operation to be used.
The references in the comments refer to the accounts of the European System of Accounts ESA-95.