National Statistics Office

Directorate B: Business Statistics

Short-term Business Statistics

National Statistics Office

Lascaris Valletta VLT 2000, Malta

The industrial import price index measures the monthly development of prices of goods imported by domestic enterprises.

NACE rev 2 and CPA 2008.

The scope of the data fall under the European Sample Scheme regulations.

The current CPAs are 26.11 (manufacture of electronic components) and 19.20 (manufacture of refined petroleum products)

Import prices are calculated on the basis of CPA products and according Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197.

The formal definition for import prices is the below:

It is the objective of the import price indices to measure the monthly transaction price development of goods purchased by residents from non-residents. All the related services are initially excluded from the scope except for those covered by CIF (cost, insurance, freight) trade agreement. The price indices should track the price movements of comparable items over time. It is essential that all price-determining characteristics of the products are taken into account, including quantity of units sold, transport provided, rebates, service conditions, guarantee conditions origin and destination. The specification must be such that in subsequent reference periods, the observation unit is able uniquely to identify the product and to provide the appropriate price per unit.

Kind of Activity Unit (KAU).

The statistical population includes units falling under the relevant CPA. The population is maintained by the Business Registers unit.

The indicator covers the national territory of the Maltese Islands.

The data are available from the year 2005.

Base year (year on which weights are based): 2015

Reference year (year when the index equals 100): 2015

The data are provided in index form.

The data are collected on a monthly basis.

The NSO was established by virtue of the Malta Statistics Authority Act XXIV of 2000 and replaced the Central Office of Statistics as from 1 March 2001.

The related European legislation is the European Business Statistics Regulation 2019/2152 and Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197.

Data Sharing matters are governed by the Malta Statistics Authority Act XXIV of 2000. 

Apart from the established legislative framework, the NSO is also guided by an internal general confidentiality policy. Data tagged as confidential are not available for publication.

Confidentiality matters are regulated by the Malta Statistics Authority Act XXIV of 2000. Such data are marked as such.

There is no news release on the import prices data.

There is no news release on the import prices data.

No national releases are issued by the Short-term Unit relating to import prices. Data are transmitted to Eurostat according to STS Regulations.

Eurostat transmissions for this index are carried out on a monthly basis and sent 45 days after the end of the reference period.

The main dissemination channel for official statistics is the NSO website.

Not available.

The NSO website offers an online statistical database (StatDB) that provides a more in-depth analysis for the more expert statistical user or researcher. The StatDB requires registration as only registered users can extract data from the database. Registration is free-of-charge. This index does not feature in this database.

In general, index results made available to Eurostat ensure a sufficient degree of representativeness of data. More detailed data than that published locally and internationally are available on request but are subject to the confidentiality clauses.

In such cases, data are provided in index form. Micro data are not provided to users.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat on a monthly basis

A Laspeyres type index is used. This index is part of the European Sampling Scheme.

Not available.

The NSO quality assurance principles are developed according to the ESS Handbook for Quality Reports (2014). 

Aspects of quality are divided into several steps. These are specifying needs, designing and building data instruments and collecting, processing, analysing, disseminating, archiving and evaluating data. The main guiding principles in quality management are found in the:

European Statistics Code of Practice - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/quality/european-quality-standards/european-statistics-code-of-practice

Quality Assurance Framework of the ESS - http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/64157/4392716/ESS-QAF-V1-2final.pdf/bbf5970c-1adf-46c8-afc3-58ce177a0646

Overall, the quality of this index is of good quality.

Currently, the main user of these data are Eurostat.

Not available.

Data are compliant with relevant European and local regulations and requirements are fully fulfilled.

The overall accuracy of the indicator is considered to be good.

However, CPA 12 was phased out and new CPAs (26.11 and 19.20) were introduced.

Sampling error is not calculated for this indicator. These NACE categories are relatively small.

Non-sampling errors due to non-response are negligible.

The index is disseminated 45 days after the end of the reference period.

All deadlines are respected during the course of the year.

To ensure geographical comparability across member states the index is compiled according to the EBS Regulations and STS Methodological Guidelines. The same concepts are applied to the whole national territory of the Maltese Islands.

The data series has been compiled since the year 2005. There is no break in series.

Import prices are not compared with any other sources.

Not available.

Burden is currently considered to be very low for this indicator.

The same revision policy is applied to both data released nationally and that sent to Eurostat.

No major revisions occur in this indicator.

The same revision practice is used for all the data in the short-term statistics unit. Data marked as provisional are revised when actual data are received and estimates are replaced.

For this indicator, no revisions are done.

Import price data are provided from the largest business units for NACE 26.11. For NACE 19.20 data is gathered from the NSO's International Trade Statistics Unit. 

Monthly.

The data are collected from business units and from the NSO's International Trade Statistics Unit.

Validations of format and file structure checks and intra-dataset checks are checked with the use of in-house excel sheets and access databases.

Revisions analysis is also carried out for every data transmission sent to Eurostat using in-house access queries. When data revisions are significantly large, a short explanation is also given to Eurostat.

A Laspeyres type index is used for compilation.

Until 2018, the GESMES/TS conversion tool was used. From 2019 onwards, the SDMX-ML tool is used.

No adjustments are done.

No other comments to add.