The abstract is dedicated to the 20-th anniversary of creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States and presents comparable statistical materials characterizing socio-economic situation in the Commonwealth countries for the period 1991-2010. It includes information on population, employment, gross domestic product and other macroeconomic
indicators, prices, output of basic industrial and agricultural products, consumer market, consumption of main foodstuffs, money income and expenditure of population, social sphere, external trade, international comparisons.
          The source of the information contained in the abstract are official data of the CIS national statistical services, submitted to the CIS Statcommittee in accordance with “The List of Indicators for the Interstate Exchange of Statistical Information” approved by the Council of the Heads of these services and methodology agreed upon for the CIS countries
which meets international standards and provides for necessary data comparability. Cases of deviation from the general methodology, which are caused by features of the economy and legislation of the countries are specified in the text and in the section of methodological explanations of the abstract. Aggregated and other derived indicators in the abstract (in particular, the totals for the Commonwealth) are calculated as a rule in accordance with the agreed methodology, but some of their magnitudes are computed taking into account additional officially published information (web-sites, abstracts, etc.). In individual cases negligible discrepancy between total and sum of items is explained by the rounding of the data.
          The data for Georgia are published only up to August 2009 when it withdrew from the CIS.
          Recalculations of a number of value indicators were done with the usage of average annual official exchange rates published by Commonwealth countries national banks. In order to convert the country’s currency into Russian roubles, US dollars and euro the data of National (Central) Banks on the exchange rates of the national currencies shown on page 278-282 should be used.
          Data for 2010 for some indicators are preliminary and can be revised later.