This annual publication provides three types of detailed tables for world, country and institutional financial data. World tables enable international comparisons of the structure and relative magnitude of government operations. Country tables present data on central government revenue, grants, expenditure, lending minus repayments, financing and debt for 132 countries. Institutional tables list major units of general government and contain notes on data coverage for country tables. The data for this Yearbook are obtained primarily by means of a detailed questionnaire distributed to government finance statistics correspondents.

Detailed annual data for Fund member governments are supplied on revenue income by source (tax, lending, bonds, etc.), and expenditure by sector (defense, education, health, etc.) for all levels of government (national, state, local). Topics covered include deficit/surplus or total financing, revenues or grants, expenditures, lending minus repayments, domestic financing, foreign financing, domestic debt or total debt, and foreign debt. The Yearbook provides data on budgetary operations, extra-budgetary operations, social security, and consolidated financial operations of central governments. A section of the Government Finance Statistics Yearbook is devoted to a cross-country comparison of data