National Institute of Statistics (Istat)

Directorate for Business Statistics (DCSE)

Division for Statistics on Production and Foreign Trade (SEB)

Via Tuscolana, 1788

00173 Rome Italy

Construction producer price index for new residential buildings measures the monthly dynamics of prices paid by the client to the construction company.

Construction cost index for new residential buildings measures the development of costs incurred by the contractor to carry out the construction process.

NACE rev. 2 Statistical Classification of Economic Activities

 CPA Statistical classification of products by activity 

The construction producer price index is an output price index.

It is made up of three components: direct costs (construction costs), overheads and contractors' profit margin (markup).

Overheads include:

i) telecommunication services;

ii) security and investigation services;

iii) postal and courier services;

iv) software production, data processing and other information services;

v) legal and account services;

vi) cleaning services.

The dynamics of each service are defined by services producer price indices.

The price measure of the contractor's profit margin is defined as a deflator (ratio between a value index - supply and use gross operating margin - and a quantity index - production in construction index). 

Construction costs index is an input price index.

It is made up of four groups of construction costs: 1) labour costs: wages and salaries 2) materials costs; 3) hire charges; 4) transport charges. The groups contain several categories that are different in name and number.

1) Labour costs are taken from the Istat monthly survey on contractual wages. The selected variable is the hourly cost of labour in the construction industry. They are different for each category of workers. They are made up of contractual minimum initial payments, all the additional allowances and the social charges taken from the national contract for workers in the industry, complemented by any provincial contracts. 

2) Materials costs are actually factor prices and refer to average monthly prices for goods delivered "free to site", excluding VAT. They are recorded by the survey on Producer prices in industry-domestic sales.

3) Hire costs refer to machines which, in the overall hire charges, have a significant weight (excavators, concrete- mixers, bulldozers, cranes, etc.). They are considered on a ¿hot¿ basis, i.e. with the machine working therefore including fuel and/or electricity consumption and the hourly cost of the operator. 

4) Transport costs are estimated using the services producer prices index (Freight transport by road, H49.4).

Construction producer price /cost indices are secondary statistics: data derived from primary statistics.

41.00.1 without CPA 41.00.14, i.e. new residential buildings excluding residencies for communities.

The whole national territory

Construction producer price comparable data are available since 2010.

Construction cost comparable data are available since 1967.

Construction producer price/cost indices are compiled according to the methodology of the annual chain-linking on a monthly basis.

The base period is the month of December of the previous year. Base periods are chain-linked to the reference year (2021).

Index

Month

Legal basis:

National level: This is one of the compulsory surveys fixed every year by a Decree of the President of the Republic (D.P.R.).

European level:

Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics (EBS-Regulation) and the Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements according to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 (General Implementing Act).

Obligation on units to provide data:

Materials costs: Istat collects this information on the basis of a compulsory monthly survey, provided for the National Statistical Program (PSN) (please, see metadata on 'STS producer price in industry').

Planned changes in legal basis, obligation to respond and frame used: None.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat on a monthly basis and are available at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database

Several national legal acts guarantee the confidentiality of data requested for statistical purposes. According to Art. 9, paragraph 1 of the Legislative Decree n. 322 of 1989, personal data can only be disseminated in aggregate form, to make it impossible to identify individuals. The Personal Data Protection Code - introduced by the Legislative Decree No. 196 of 30 June 2003 - and Legislative Decree No. 101 of 10 September 2018 (General Data Protection Regulation) provides special rules concerning the processing of personal data for statistical purposes within the National Statistical System (Sistan). Further, to make statistical confidentiality and protection of personal data effective, Istat is currently taking appropriate organizational, logistical, methodological and statistical measures by internationally established standards.

Links to relevant legal acts on statistics are also listed on the website of Sistan.

Price and cost series are not published. Only the total construction price and the total construction cost indices are published.

Every year, in December Istat publishes a release calendar providing the precise release dates for the coming year. The calendar is distributed to the press and is available free of charge to interested parties.

The release calendar is disseminated on ISTAT's website Press release calendar.

Data are released simultaneously to all interested parties by issuing the press release “Prezzi alla produzione dell’industria e delle costruzioni”.  Eurostat receives embargoed data in advance of its publishing date. There is no pre-release access. The press release (Italian version and short English version) is subsequently posted on Istat’s website (https://www.istat.it /en/prices).

Data are also sent to  Eurostat according to the required standards by EDAMIS using SDMX format. 

The short-term information is also used for quarterly and annual National Accounts.

Monthly

A monthly press release "Prezzi alla produzione dell'industria delle e costruzioni”. (Prices/Archive).

Indices are published in Annuario Statistico Italiano - (ASI ) the Statistical Yearbook - Chapter 16 Annuario Statistico Italiano/Prezzi

The data are disseminated in IstatData, Data categories Prices, sub-categories Producer Price on Construction, dataset Construction producer prices indices - monthly data (base 2021) and sub- theme Construction costs, dataset Residential building - monthly data (base 2021).

The data are presented in aggregate form in multidimensional tables. By acting on variables, reference periods and the arrangement of heads and sides, users can create custom tables and charts. Data sets can be searched by keyword, theme and region. The platform uses the open-source tools "Data Browser" and "Meta & Data Manager" developed by Istat (https://sdmxistattoolkit.github.io) following the international standard SDMX (Statistical Data and Metadata exchange) for the exchange and sharing of statistical data and metadata.

More information are available in the User Guide

None

More information about procedures applied for quality management and quality assessment are reported in the document "Quality Guidelines For Statistical Processes" - December 2012.

Quality assurance is provided in the primary surveys whose data are used for Construction producer price/cost indices compilation.

Timeliness, coverage and relevance are in line with the other STS indicators compiled by Istat.

Main users of Construction producer price/cost indices are:

• Institutions: government departments, ECB, national central bank, international organizations, etc.
• Social actors: employers' organizations, trade unions, lobby groups, etc.
• Media 
• Researchers & students 
• Enterprises/businesses 
• Internal users 
• Eurostat

Not available

Eurostat's requirements in terms of time series are fulfilled. Furthermore, Construction producer price/cost indices actually meet the Italian users' information needs.

Accuracy is measured in terms of the distance between provisional and final data.

Construction producer prices/costs are derived from Labour, Producer prices and Production in the construction sector surveys.

No sampling error is compiled.

Producer price of industry and services, labour and production in the construction surveys provide quality checked data for Construction producer price/cost indices.

Indices are published as preliminary about 30 days after the end of the reference month (t+30) and turn final at t+60.

European and national deadlines are always met.

Construction producer price/cost indices are compiled at national level only.

Construction producer price series are available since January 2010.

Construction costs are available since January 1967.

Not available

The total construction producer price index is the weighted mean (Laspeyres type index) of direct cost groups (labour, materials, hires and transports), overheads and contractor's markup.

The total construction cost index is the weighted mean (Laspeyres type index) of direct cost groups (labour, materials, hires and transports).

Internal coherence is straightforward.

The cost estimate is compiled in terms of total number of hours worked (THW) which is equal to the product of three terms: (total) Annual Working Days (AWD), (total) Hours Worked per Day (HWD), Number of Persons involved in the Survey (NPS).

No statistical burden for respondents (reporting units) occurs as Construction producer price/cost indices are built up processing data already available. No data collection operations are carried out.

On a monthly basis, provisional and final indexes are disseminated. Data concerning the current month are provisional while those applied to the previous months are final. No other revision is calculated.

Generally, major changes in methodology, sources and statistical techniques are announced through ad hoc publications.

Advance notification of methodological changes is also provided through seminars and papers disseminated throughout the scientific community.

Differences between provisional and final data are due to coverage achieved in data sources.

The Mean Absolute Revision (MAR), Mean Revision (MR) and RMAR (Relative Mean Absolute Revision) are compiled for totals. These indicators refer to 36 values for monthly data form 2021 to 2023. The indicators refer to the total indices.

Construction producer price index

Constructioncostindex

Data are collected on a monthly/quarterly basis.

Questionnaires used in the survey: none.
Planned changes in national questionnaires: none.
Data collection media: none.
Planned changes in data collection methodology: none.

Data are validated to the following actions:

• analysis of quality indicators supporting output data;
• comparison with data from other independent sources;
• analysis of available time series.

Producer price index in construction is made up of three components: direct costs (construction costs), overheads and contractors' markup.

Direct costs and overheads are lists of items to whom a set of appropriate price indices are referred to.

Direct costs dynamic is provided by a set of industrial producer price indices and by price indices derived from administrative data.

Overhead dynamic derives from a set of producer price indices in services.

A price measure of contractor¿s profit margin is defined as a deflator. This one is the ratio between a value index (supply and use gross operating margin) and a quantity index (production in construction index).

Weighting systems are derived from a set of coherent data sources: National Accounts, Structural Business Statistics, Building Permits and, at a detailed level, direct cost items are listed and weighted according to the construction project for a residential building, provided by the Universities of Cassino and Rome Civil Engineering Department. The project refers to a medium residential typology - one multi-family houses (4 floors plus a basement, 9 units for residential use with shared areas, 16 non-residential units). The value-weights structure is price-update every year so as to make the time weights and the index base time coincident

Seasonally adjusted indices are not calculated.

None