How Can a Rev. 4 Division 45 Code Be Traced in Rev. 5?

In ISIC Rev. 5, published by the UN Statistics Division, there is no single new home for every old Division 45 code, because the old division mixed trade and repair. Tracing starts by asking what the business actually did under the old code. A selling activity leads toward Section G trade, while a repairing activity leads toward Division 95 in Section T.

What Was Actually Done Under the Old Code?

Tracing begins with a description, not a number. An old Division 45 code on its own says little, because the old division held two different families of work under one roof. A reader who starts from the code number alone risks carrying that mixture forward and landing in the wrong Rev. 5 area. A reader who starts from the old code description, and from what the business spent its days doing, has a far better chance of separating the strands. Was stock being sold, or was something being fixed? That single question splits most traces at the first fork.

Selling work points toward Section G trade. Repairing work points toward Division 95 in Section T. The fork is simple to state and harder to apply when a business did both, which many vehicle businesses did. In a mixed case, the trace needs more than the fork. It needs a sense of which work dominated, what was sold separately, and whether parts sale stood on its own or formed part of a repair job. Those details, taken from the old record and from the business as it operated, shape the direction of the search in Rev. 5.

How Does a Selling Trace Differ From a Repairing Trace?

A selling trace asks three questions in turn. Was the sale wholesale or retail? What vehicle or part was traded? And was the seller trading stock, or arranging a sale for someone else? A wholesaler selling vehicles onward to dealers, a retailer selling a motorcycle to a rider, and a parts seller supplying accessories each follow a selling route, but they do not land in the same detailed heading. The product, the buyer, and the wholesale or retail character all narrow the search inside Section G.

A repairing trace asks a different set of questions. What was repaired, and was the repair the main work or a side service attached to a sale? A motorcycle repair trace, for example, moves toward repair in Division 95, even though it began life beside motorcycle sale in Division 45. The vehicle in common can mislead a reader into keeping sale and repair together. Rev. 5 asks the reader to let them part, and to follow each strand to its own new home.

What Role Do Correspondence Tables Play in a Formal Trace?

This guide explains the logic of tracing. It does not assign a new code to any old record, and it should not be used as a substitute for a formal mapping. Published correspondence tables from UNSD and from national institutes are the proper tool when a trace must stand up in a record, a dataset, or a time series. Those tables show how old headings relate to new ones, including cases where one old heading splits across several new headings or where several old headings merge.

A careful reader will also record doubt rather than smoothing it away. If the old description is vague, if the business mixed selling and repairing, or if the correspondence table offers more than one plausible route, that uncertainty belongs in the working notes. It can then be taken to the record holder, with the old description and the candidate Rev. 5 wording side by side. Guessing a single new heading, and then treating that guess as settled, creates a false precision that later readers cannot easily undo.

Why Might Two Old Neighbours End Up Far Apart in Rev. 5?

Tracing an old Division 45 code is therefore best treated as an open inquiry rather than a lookup with a guaranteed answer. This guide offers statistical classification background only, and it does not settle any reader’s code, principal activity, or registration. For a formal result, take the old description, the correspondence material, and the Rev. 5 wording to the national statistical institute or business register that holds the record, and let that body confirm the entry.