fitting – how to extract CountryData[] without String names for use in numeric analysis

I have the following Code that extracts selected variables and makes a table. I like to use these data in statistical analysis such as Fit[...], but I cannot use them because String variable units are also extracted together with the raw data.

How can I extract the raw data without String units and export it as an XLS file for use in Linear and Nonlinear Regression analysis?

countLst={"Argentina", "Australia", "Austria", "Belgium", 
  "Bulgaria","Brazil", "Brunei Darussalam", "Canada",  
  "Switzerland", "Chile", "China", "Colombia", "Costa Rica", 
  "Cyprus", "Czech Republic","Germany", "Denmark", "Spain", 
  "Estonia", "Finland", "France", "United Kingdom", "Greece", 
  "Hong Kong", "Croatia", "Hungary", "Indonesia", "India", 
  "Ireland", "Iceland", "Israel", "Italy", "Japan", "Kazakhstan",
  "Cambodia", "South Korea", "Lithuania", "Luxembourg", "Latvia", 
  "Morocco", "Mexico", "Malta", "Malaysia", "Netherlands", 
  "Norway", "New Zealand", "Peru", "Philippines", "Poland", 
  "Portugal", "Romania", "Russian Federation", "Saudi Arabia", 
  "Singapore", "Slovak Republic", "Slovenia", "Sweden", 
  "Thailand", "Tunisia", "Turkey", "Taiwan", "United States", 
  "Vietnam", "South Africa"
 };

Text[Grid[
  Prepend[{CountryData[#, "Name"],
  CountryData[#,"PopulationGrowth"],
  CountryData[#, "GDP"],
  CountryData[#, "TotalFertilityRate"], 
  CountryData[#, "GrossInvestment"], 
  CountryData[#, "InternetUsers"], 
  CountryData[#, "InventoryChange"], 
  CountryData[#, "MedianAge"], 
  CountryData[#, "TradeValueAdded"], 
  CountryData[#, "UnemploymentFraction"]} & /@ countLst, {"", 
  "pop. growth", "GDP", "fertility", "grossInv", "internet", 
  "inventory", "medianAge", "tradeVA", "unempl."}], Frame -> All, 
  Background -> {None, {LightBlue, {LightYellow}}}]
 ]