The Statistics on Public Expenditures for Economic Development (SPEED) is among the most comprehensive and publicly available data sources for information on public expenditures. The latest version of SPEED contains information from 10 public expenditure sectors in 147 countries from 1980 to 2012. The sectors include agriculture, communication, education, defense, health, mining, social protection, fuel and energy, transport, and transport and communication (as a group). IFPRI researchers have compiled data from multiple sources, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and national governments, and conducted extensive data checks and adjustments to ensure consistent spending measurements over time that are free of exchange-rate fluctuations and currency denomination changes.
SPEED is a user friendly tool that could help governments to better allocate their resources to be consistent with their policy objectives, and citizens’ needs and priorities. Because of the wide coverage of time periods, countries, and sectors, it could help policy makers and researchers to better understand the linkages between different types of public expenditure and development. It could also help examine historical trends and compare those to other countries.
SPEED is led by IFPRI and funded by the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM).
For more information, please contact IFPRI SPEED.
2015 version contains information from 10 public expenditure sectors in 147 countries
For understanding linkages between different sectors of public spending
Key issues related to the data compilation, e.g. handling of currency redenomination, changes in definition of sector expenditure, etc.