Statistical Office of the  Republic of Serbia (SORS).

Construction units

Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia, Milana Rakića 5, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia

Indeks of Production in Construction is based on the production value.

The aim of the Index of construction production is to provide basic information on changes in construction activity by quarters. This indicator shows the construction activity which is realized in the reporting quarter.

Data are collected by using the reporting method on the Quarterly survey on Construction (GRAĐ-31 forms).

- National classification of economic activities - KD (2010) based on NACE Rev.2 classification (Statistical   Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community).

- Classification of Types of Constructions (CC classification).

Production in Construction cover activities listed in the Section F of NACE Rev.2.

The survey covers legal entities registered in the Section F of NACE Rev.2. - Construction (divisions 41, 42 and 43), as well as legal entities that are not registered in the construction industry but they perform significant construction works.

The purpose of Construction Production Indices is to show changes of the production in section Construction, calculated on the base of production value.

Indices are calculated according to the EU Regulations on STS. The definition of the value of construction production is compliant with Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197.

Production value is value of construction works performed during the reference quarter on construction site. It excludes value of works performed by subcontractors, value of land purchase, architects’ or consultants fees and VAT. Value of construction works covers value of works, built materials and finished products for embedding, purchased by the reporting units and reporting unit’s profit. Value of construction work refers to the value of all kinds of works new constructions and reconstruction, repair work and maintenance.

Observation units are buildings and civil engineering works, which are built by enterprises.

Reporting units are enterprises.

The statistical population comprises the production of enterprises registered in the Section F of NACE Rev.2. - Construction (divisions 41, 42 and 43) and also some non-construction companies which performing construction works.

Not cover all enterprises.  During the formation of covers for conducting research selected the enterprises that have performed significant activity in the previous year (according to the Annual survey of construction activity). Applied a cut-off system for the value. Lower limit is not exactly determined and depends on the intensity of construction work on the municipal level.

In the quarterly survey, covered about 600 reporting units.

Republic of Serbia.

(Remark: Since 1999, the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia doesn’t dispose of certain data for AP Kosovo and Metohia, so they are not contained in the data coverage for the Republic of Serbia (total))

The time series cover the period from the first quarter, 2000.

Base (reference) year is 2015.

Indices.

Quarter.

National legislation:

- Official Statistics Law

- Resolution on the Programme of official statistics

- Regulation on the Plan of official statistics for the current year

* The above documents are available at SORS website:  www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/o-nama/dokumenti

EU Legislation for the Quarterly Statistical Survey on Construction:

The European Parliament and Council adopted the European Business Statistics (EBS) Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on 27 November 2019, followed by the Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to the mentioned EBS Regulation (General Implementing Act).

The former legal basis for the STS indicators is the Council Regulation No 1165/98 of 19 May 1998 concerning short-term statistics and subsequent amending regulations.

Data are regularly transmitted to Eurostat and to International Monetary Fund.

Data confidentiality is stipulated by:

- Official Statistics Law (Official Gazette of RS, number 104/2009), Articles 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, and 49.

(www.stat.gov.rs/media/2322/zakon_o_statisticie.pdf)

- Rulebook on statistical data protection in the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia

(www.stat.gov.rs/media/2343/rulebook-on-statistical-data-protection-in-sors.doc ) 

- Guidelines on measures of data and information protection in the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia

(Rulebooks and guidelines | Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia)

Confidential data are treated according to policy rules (see Official statistics law, point 7.1).

Data are published only on the level at which they are not confidential.     

Calendar of releases is available at SORS website on the 1st day of December every year for the forthcoming year (http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/calendar).

All SORS releases are launched at 12.00. Any divergence from the defined time schedule are announced in advance and explained in the Calendar.  

Calendar of releases is available at SORS website:

http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/calendar

The data obtained through statistical surveys are released at the internet presentation (http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/), in the database (http://data.stat.gov.rs/?caller=SDDB&languageCode=en-US), in statistical releases and publications (http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/publikacije/). 

The results of official statistics are available at the same time to all users on impartial basis; any privileged access by external users before their release is not allowed.  

Data are collected quarterly. Frequency of dissemination is quarterly.

News release is not available.

Data on construction production index are regularly published in Statistical releases and Monthly statistical bulletin

http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/oblasti/gradjevinarstvo

Indexes that have been published in national publications calculated on the previous quarter and the previous year.

Data on Quarterly indices of construction production were published in online database . 

http://data.stat.gov.rs/?caller=05&languageCode=en-US

On request, the access to anonymized microdata is ensured to scientific and research institutions.

The request can be placed by email at stat@stat.gov.rs , or by regular mail addressed at  5 Milana Rakica St, Belgrade.

For more information, please see http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/korisnicka-podrska/micropodaci .

Data on construction production index (total) are transmitted to Eurostat quarterly, beginning with the 1st quarter of 2000. The data are transmitted in requested form.

Short methodological information on the national methodologies is available on the statistical website: http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-us/istrazivanja/methodology-and-documents/?a=05&s=0

The European business statistics manual, 2021 provides a detailed description of European business statistics, including how they are compiled and the methodologies behind them.

The EBS methodological manual for short-term business statistics, 2021 provides an overview of the most important methodological issues concerning STS

The EBS compilers manual for short-term business statistics, 2021 contains a comprehensive set of recommendations on the compilation of the STS statistics.

Not available.

The SORS quality management system is relied on the Serbian official statistics mission and vision, as well as on the European Statistics Code of Practice – CoP and the Total Quality Management – TQM principles, which together make the common quality framework of the European Statistical System (ESS).

For more information, please see the documents at http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/o-nama/sistem-upravljanja-kvalitetom.

Indices of construction production are produced in accordance with methodological requirements and standards. Data are compared with previous and corresponding period and checks with different source are made. The results of this survey are comparable with the results of the annually survey on construction activity. The publication schedule is fixed and announced in advance.

The indices are used by different users. The National Accounts department is the relevant internal user. Users of statistical data on construction production indices can be found in all areas: individual citizens, business entities, media, state government as well as academic, scientific and research institutions and non-government organizations, Eurostat,  International Monetary Fund.

On biennial basis (once in two years), by the means of web interview, implemented is the User Satisfaction Survey.

The survey results are available at SORS website: http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/o-nama/sistem-upravljanja-kvalitetom.

Indices of production in construction - total level, are available on a quarterly basis for national purpose and for Eurostat. It is in accordance with the STS requirements for countries that belong to the Group I.

Quarterly survey does not include all the reporting units performing construction work. It also does not cover any works carried out in the organization of individual owners. Therefore, once a year quarterly index has corected based on the results of the Annual Survey of construction activity.

The annual value of construction works includes the value of all construction works performed on the construction site and the value of the work performed by individuals who was estimated based on permits. On the basis of these elements the overall accuracy of the index can be considered good.

Quantifying sampling errors is not possible because the sample is not based on random sampling.

Random sampling is not carried out due to the specific character of the construction activity (the major number of enterprises executes construction works irrespective of the registered activity, every year establish new enterprises that are carriers of significant construction activity).

Applied a cut-off system for the value of construction production.  The sampling frame is based on the results of the annual 2019 Construction Survey. Lower limit is not exactly determined and depends on the intensity of construction work at the level of each municipality individually. In the quarterly survey during 2022. years, covered 648 reporting units. Value of construction production of the quartarly surveyed units represents 83,7% of the total value construction activity, which were colected from annual construction survey  in 2021.

Quarterly indicators are transmitted to Eurostat in required deadlines. The legal deadline is 60 days following the reporting period. A quarterly indicator is published in a national statistical release 40 days from the reference period.

Questionnaires are sent to the reporting units once (for the whole year) at the end of January. The deadline for replies is the 25th day in a month at the latest for the previous month.

All data are published according to the announced Publications calendar.

Link http://www.stat.gov.rs/en-US/calendar/?a=05&s

The same concepts are used within the whole national territory.

All data have been available since 2000. There is no difference in comparability or accessibility of the data for various frequencies. 

The change of the base year in 2018 was not affect the comparability of data over time.    

The quarterly index is aligned to Quarterly National Accounts. Construction quarterly data on value of construction works done used for the Quarterly National Accounts compilation. It’s also compared with other indicators such as the Number of Persons Employed, Hours Worked. Comparisons are made with other data produced by the Construction Statistics Unit Monthly Report on Issued Building Permits. Results show a very similar global dynamic between the two indicators, and the attitude of building permits data to anticipate the evolution of production in the construction sector.

Process of computation of the total index of construction production takes account of internal coherence. 

Not available.

The SORS general revision policy constitutes the global frame ensuring that each statistical domain shall define its own revision policy in compliance with its specific nature. 

 The general SORS revision policy determines:

 - general rules of revisions of the published data,

- forms of informing users as regards the possible causes of revisions,

- categories of revisions, and

- documents covering all aspects of revisions.

  The general SORS revision policy is available at  Policy | Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia

Indices of production in construction for all quarters of current year are published in the database on the SORS website and transmitted to the Eurostat as a preliminary. Data, which are not final, may be revised when the data for next quarter are added. Once a year, the indices for the previous year are reconciled on the basis of Annual survey of construction activity. The revised data are transmitted to the Eurostat and published in the database on the SORS website.

The same revision policy is applied for publishing of national data and for data transmitted to Eurostat.

Calendar for data revision is available on Revision calendar | Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia.

Benchmarking (confrontation) with other statistics is carried out but not published.

Data published quarterly in first releases are preliminary. There are 1 to 5 revisions per year. One od them are realized annually (when are compared quarterly and annually data) and the other are realized quarterly (because of the availability of more complete data, or additional corrections from respondents). Calendar for data revision does not exist.

Quarterly, there are approximately 5–15 changes. The most of them does not significant effect of IPC.  SORS has no practice to publish revised data in ``new`` Release form, but put them into statistical database and also transmitted to the Eurostat. Revised data are marked in footnotes in the relevant published tables. The users are informed that indices published in Statistical Release are ``preliminary data`` that might be changed. 

Major revisions due to changes in the base year and the classification of activities were carried out within the framework of Eurostat timetable. In accordance with the STS Regulation, the base year has been changed from 2010 to 2015 for the Index of Production in construction in May 2018.

MR and MAR were calculated for year on year grow rates, for unadjusted and calendar adjusted data.

The MR and MAR indicator, calculated as difference between the first published data for each quarter and the last published data for that quarter.

The data source is statistical survey ``Quarterly survey on Construction– GRAĐ-31``.

Covered are legal entities registered in the Section F of NACE Rev.2. - Construction (divisions 41, 42 and 43), as well as legal entities that are not registered in the construction industry but they perform significant construction works.

Not cover all enterprises.  During the formation of covers for conducting research we select those reporting units that have performed significant activity in the previous year (according to the Annual survey of construction activity). We apply a cut-off system for the value. Lower limit is not exactly determined and depends on the territory in which the construction work is performed.

 In the quarterly survey during 2022. years, covered 648 reporting units. Value of construction production of the quartarly surveyed units represents 83,7% of the total value construction activity, which were colected from annual construction survey  in 2021.

Data are collected quarterly.

Data are collected with a paper questionnaire (GRAĐ-31).  Questionnaires are sent to reporting units by post for all quarters at the beginning of the year. Also, the questionnaire is located on the website and reporting units can use it. Reporting units may send completed questionnaires by post, fax or e-mail. Questionnaires can also be filled through the web application.

Actions taken to speed up or increase the rate of response: re-contacts by mail or post (written remainders), telephone contacts.

Data quality checks are done by manual revision of questionnaires and procedures of logical control. Collected data are first checked and verified during the process of data entering. After that quality checking is carried out by using a set of strict manual and electronic logical and calculation controls. Reports that fail to meet the quality standards are subject to verification and are corrected as required.

Obtained results from the actual reporting period are compared with the previous and the corresponding reporting period of the previous year. Furthermore the indices are crosschecked with the hours of works and number of persons employed of the same category. If inconsistencies are detected the data must be verified at micro level again by using raw data of the questionnaire and possibly changed.

For logical control and corrections of errors is used Integrated Survey Tool (IST). IST is a software package that includes the process of data entry, logical control and production of output tables.

Data are collected on the base of cut-off survey,  without a random sample of enterprises and without an estimate for smaller units

There are no unit non-response rates and item non-response rates, because reporting units that did not send filled-in questionnaires or did not fully complete the questionnaire are contacted by phone and asked to send the filled-in questionnaire for the current month or to provide the missing data.

The Index of Production in Construction (IPC) is simple index. Indices for Eurostat are calculated on the average of the base year 2015, in accordance with the STS Regulation.

Indexes that have been published in national publications calculated on the previous quarter and the previous year.

Method of weighting and chaining is not available. Indices of producer’s prices of elements and materials incorporated in construction are used as the price deflator for Index of Production in Construction.

The data is working day and seasonally adjusted.

More information about the seasonal adjustment please see in Annex.

Not available.