The basic principles of the CBNE are common to all national classifications of economic branches used by socialist countries. The CBNE is a typology of organizationally dissociated structural units of the national economy by types of their main activity. In socialist countries these groupings serve as an instrument of statistical analysis of proportionality structural changes in the national economy according to plan. These are usually enterprises, agencies of organizations operating on an independent balance sheet. In socialist countries the independent accounting balance sheet is a feature of economic independence and legal person in property relations.
Balances are part of state accounting.
These forms are selected by the USSR Ministry of Finance and the USSR Central Statistical Office in agreement with the ministries and agencies concerned. Enterprises, organizations and agencies are classified according to their main activity fulfiling functions directly related to the basic purpose and basic end result of the economic activity of the given enterprise, organization or agency. If, apart from its main activity, the enterprise or organization performs other activities which organizationally are not isolated from each other nor have an independent system of accounting, then this enterprise or organization belongs to the grouping responsible for the predominant type of activity. In particular, the attribution of industrial enterprises to one of the sub-branches or groups of industry is effected mainly in accordance with the sectoral origin of the products they turn out which, in terms of cost, occupy a major place in the total output of the given enterprise. This does not refer to multisectoral enterprises where the accounting system makes it possible to draw a line between the activities of their subunits and to consider them as separate classification units.