Statistics Portugal

National Accounts Department / Price Statistics Unit

Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE)

Avenida António José de Almeida, 5

1000-043 Lisboa, Portugal

The construction cost index for new housing (CCINH) is a composite indicator, which measures the change in the prices of inputs used in the construction of new residential buildings (i.e., materials, labour and other relevant construction factors).

The statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE) Rev. 2 is used in the compilation of the indicator.

The CCINH covers Divisions 41 (construction of buildings) and 43 (specialised construction activities) of NACE’s Section F (construction).

Additional sub-indices for labour costs and construction materials are calculated. The main components of the labour costs are wages. The index for materials shows the evolution for construction materials in individual construction services. There is no regional breakdown in provided index series.

There is no reporting or observation units as the index is derived based on information provided from data sources already available at Statistics Portugal.

The theoretical statistical population of the index is the set of newly built residential buildings in the country.

The CCINH covers the whole country.

The index starts in January 2000.

The base year of the index is 2015.

Results are presented in the form of index-numbers, which do not have a particular unit of measure.

The reference period of the CCINH is the month.

Statistics Portugal is the institution that is at the core of the national statistical system, which is responsible for official statistics in Portugal. The role of Statistics Portugal in the national statistical System is defined by Law no. 92 of May 13, 2008 and its mission and competencies are defined by Decree-law no. 136 of July 2, 2012. These include the compilation, dissemination and development of official statistics such as the CCNH.

The legal basis for the collection, compilation and dissemination of the CCNH is, in addition, anchored in the European Business Statistics (EBS) Regulation (EU) no. 2019/2152 of 27 November 2019 and Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197.

In addition to the data transmission to Eurostat, the OECD receives the overall CCINH figure on a monthly basis. The CCINH is not transmitted to any other institutions.

The framework for confidentiality policy is provided in article 6 of the Law no. 92 of May 13, 2008, where it is stated that no data should be disclosed in a way that allows the direct or indirect identification of respondents.

As a rule, data pertaining to a NACE activity in which there are two or less enterprises providing services on the market are not published and are treated as confidential.

An advance release calendar, which advertises the dissemination dates of the CCINH, is available from the website of Statistics Portugal.

The release calendar is available here.

The CCINH is released simultaneously to all interested parties through the website of Statistics Portugal. The data are transmitted to Eurostat though the eDamis application using the SDMX-ML format.

Monthly, up to 40 days after the end of reference period.

The data is published monthly though a specific press release on housing construction costs, which is released together with historical data in excel and csv files (an example can be found here). The press release is not subject to any ministerial comment before its release.

Data are published through Statistics Portugal’s website, from which it is possible to retrieve monthly press releases and files with data series.

Statistics Portugal provides a database in which it is possible to obtain historical data (this database is available here).

There is no public dissemination of micro data. However, micro data can be made available for scientific purposes if anonymised and if there are no confidentiality issues involved in its provision.

The data are sent to Eurostat to be used in European aggregates and/or to be released at national level together with press releases on the CCINH.

A methodology of the CCINH (base year 2015) is available through Statistics Portugal’s website. The document is only available in Portuguese.  

Not available.

The production of the CCINH does not follow any specific quality management system.

Not available.

Short-term statistics (STS) are used by different national institutions (such as the Central Bank, Ministry of Finance and researchers), international institutions (Eurostat, OECD), and non-institutional users.

Not available.

There are no gaps in produced series, which are compliant with EBS Regulations.

 Not applicable.

 Not applicable.

 Not applicable.

This indicator is released around the 40th day after the end of the reference period of the index

The CCINH has been published in accordance with the advance release calendar. There have been no delays in releasing the data.

The index is calculated for the country. Due to harmonized STS practices, the Portuguese CCINH is comparable with the indexes produced in other EU countries in the same domain.

The CCINH base 100 = 2015 is consistent over time. From 2015 onwards, the previous CCINH base 100 = 2000 was completely revised using the new data for materials and wages. For the 2000 – 2015 period, the change rates of the previous base were used to back cast the new index series.

Not applicable.

Total index is obtained by weighting material and labour indexes. The coherence between these sub-indices and the overall index is always checked.

The cost of the statistical operation is low. The data is obtained directly from other statistical operations (material prices) and from administrative data files (labour costs).

Produced indices are revised following the same principles that are applied nationally for the regular and extraordinary revision of data. Statistics Portugal’s revisions policy can be assessed through the webpage of Statistics Portugal.

The CCINH is subject to regular revisions, as a consequence of the incorporation of data obtained from the materials prices and wages.

For materials, data are obtained from the Production Prices Index (IPPI), Consumer Prices Index (CPI) and the Construction Materials Price Index (IPMC). As there are no direct sources, all data treatment is made within those 3 statistical operations.

For labour costs, data are obtained from a Monthly Wages Declaration reported to the Social Security IT Institute (SSII). Since it is not a direct source, all data treatments are made by the SSII.

The data is collected on a monthly basis.

Not applicable.

Data obtained from the IPPI, IPMC and CPI is subject to their own validation rules within each of those statistical operations. No data validation is made within the CCIHN.

The CCINH is a Laspeyres–type index.

To calculate the weights and obtain the primary sub indexes that determine the index, the IAEC – Annual Inquiry to the Construction Companies (2015) provided a partition key to know how much the whole construction sector spends on materials and labour force. It resulted in a 60% weight to materials and 40 % to labour costs.

The wages data used to obtain the labour cost series is subject to seasonal adjustment.

No comments.