Statistics Finland

Economic Statistics

PO Box 3B, FI-00022 Statistics Finland

The index of turnover in industry describes development in the turnover of manufacturing enterprises. Turnover for the largest enterprises in their respective industries is described with the data collected with the sales inquiry while the data on sales obtained from the Tax Administration's self-assessed tax data are exploited to describe the turnover of other enterprises. Foreign trade data from National Board of Customs is used for the euro area distinction. Turnover is exclusive of value added tax. The index is calculated separately for turnover, domestic sales and export turnover.

NACE Rev. 2.

Activities covered:
- Turnover covers sections B, C, D and E of NACE Rev. 2.
- Domestic sales and export turnover covers sections B and C of NACE Rev. 2.

Size classes covered:
Administrative source: monthly data for enterprises whose annual turnover is more than EUR 100,000, quarterly data for enterprises whose annual turnover is EUR 30,001 - 100,000 and yearly data for enterprises whose annual turnover is less than EUR 30,000. Quarterly and yearly data is methodologically disaggregated into monthly data. Statistical survey covers large enterprises.

The index of turnover in industry describes development in the turnover of manufacturing enterprises. Turnover for the largest enterprises in their respective industries is described with the data collected with the sales inquiry while the data on sales obtained from the Tax Administration's self-assessed tax data are exploited to describe the turnover of other enterprises. Foreign trade data from National Board of Customs is used for the euro area distinction. Turnover is exclusive of value added tax. The index is calculated separately for turnover, domestic sales and export turnover.

In practice:

Variables on questionnaire: Domestic sales, sales abroad and of which sales of goods between countries abroad.
Reference period: flow during the calendar month

Variables on administrative declarations: Domestic sales by tax rate, Sales of goods to other EU Member States, Sales of services to other EU Member States, Sales of construction services, Sales taxable at zero VAT rate
Reference period: flow during the calendar month, quarter or year

Administrative data contains some items which should be excluded from turnover by EBS regulation, such as the sales of fixed assets. This is however for the most part corrected by the survey data.

Administrative source: enterprise.

Statistical survey: mainly enterprise but for the major multi-industrial enterprises kind-of-activity unit is used as an observation unit.

Target population is industrial enterprises and entrepreneurs. In practice the survey population is enterprises and entrepreneurs which submit self-assessed tax data to the Finnish Tax Administration and fall into NACE sections B, C, D or E. This consists of around 26 000 enterprises. Business register is used for NACE information.

The frame is updated monthly and demographic changes, such as and start-ups and the most important mergers and split offs, are included instantly. Closures are included as soon as they are noticed, at the latest in three months delay.

Geographical area covered: the whole country including the Autonomous Region Of Åland.

The euro area consists of Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. 

The turnover figures also include activities carried outside Finnish territories. The largest companies are inquired monthly about the sales of goods and services from abroad to abroad. This information may contain e.g merchanting if it is reported on the financial statement of the company operating in Finland. Fully comprehensive information according to the National Accounts definition of global production has not been acquired through the questionnaire. The quality of turnover in major globally active enterprises has been examined but there is no comprehensive information on its coverage.

Data is available from 1995, except for the euro area indicators which are available from 2000 onwards.

Base (reference) year: 2015

Indices.

Month.

The production of the indices is based on the Statistics Act (280/2004) and guided by Regulation (EU) (N:o 2019/2152) of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) (N:o 2020/1197) on European business statistics. The Regulation obliges Member States to produce index series on turnover data for certain industries.

The Statistics Act (280/04) is the general act for the National Statistical Service (NSS). It contains the principles for the data collection, processing, and dissemination of official statistics. The act defines the roles of statistical authorities (Statistics Finland, Customs, National Institute for  Health and Welfare, and Tike, Information Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry) and other authorities producing statistics. The Statistics Finland Act (48/1992) states that Statistics Finland (SF) shall provide for the general development of official statistics in collaboration with other central government authorities.
The aim of the NSS is to produce official statistics, Official Statistics of Finland (OSF). European law (especially the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European statistics (EC) No 223/2009) applies to a large portion of OSF.

The Statistics Act requires that the primarily exploited sources for statistical purposes shall be the data accumulated in the administration of general government and the data produced as a consequence of the normal activities of employers, self-employed persons, corporations, and foundations. SF has the right to have access to these data under the Statistics Act. In addition, all public and private entities in Finland are obliged to provide SF with data on their finances, products and staff as necessary for the production of statistics. The right of SF to collect data by virtue of the obligation does not extend, however, to data that are kept confidential for reasons of international relationships, public safety, the interest of national defence, or the safety of the state. Before any data collection based on the obligation, the statistical authority must consult the respondents or their representatives about the contents, timing, collection methods, duration of storing of the data as well as about costs. Besides those data obtained directly from administrative sources data from natural persons are always collected on voluntary basis by using interviewing or mail and web surveys. In addition, the interviewees must be informed in advance in a written form.
The Statistics Act stipulates that a data provider who willfully fails to provide the obligatory data or willfully provides false data shall be sentenced to a fine. Nevertheless, SF is allowed to refrain from bringing charges if the violation is regarded as minor, but in practice charges have not been filed.

According to the Statistics Act, data obtained by four statistical authorities may be released to other parties either if permitted by legal provisions explicitly concerning the NSS, or upon express consent of the subject of the data. As far as statistical authorities are concerned they are allowed to transmit confidential data with identifiers to each other if it is deemed necessary for the production of statistics. The same applies to the European Statistical System authorities (ESS Authorities). Co-ordination among data-producing agencies is normal practice at both specialist and top level.

Several legal acts guarantee that individual data should be kept confidential.
According to the Act on the Openness of Government Activities (621/1999) data collected for statistical purposes are confidential. The rule is not applied to the publicity of data describing the activities of central and local government authorities and production of public services or to certain data in the Register of Enterprises and Establishments.
Under the Statistics Act, statistics shall be compiled so that the respondents whom they concern are not directly or indirectly identifiable. Violation of the secrecy obligation is punishable under the Penal Code. At the EU level, similar assurances are included in Council Regulation (EC) No 223/2009.
Details regarding the protection of information on private individuals are laid down in the Finnish Personal Data Act (523/1999).
The Statistics Act obliges statistics-producing authorities to inform respondents in writing or in other appropriate manner about the intended use of the data, the procedures to be used in producing the statistics, the principles governing whether the provision of data is obligatory or voluntary, the rights of the respondents, the arrangements for protecting the data, and the duration the data will be stored.
The Statistics Act allows a statistical authority to grant access to confidential data for use in scientific research or statistical surveys if statistical units cannot be identified directly from them. The right to use data may be given in compliance with a well-defined process including a written application.
SF has implemented procedures to prevent disclosure of any individual data provider. It has published guidelines on how to apply the Statistics Act and the Personal Data Act, as well as guidelines on the protection of tabulated data on enterprises and individual persons. A section on data protection is included in the SF publication Quality Guidelines for Official Statistics. Micro data concerning individual persons released for scientific research are first edited to remove variables that would make it possible to directly identify individual persons such as name, address or personal identification number. Similar procedures are used with respect to sensitive information about units other than individual persons.

Treatment of confidential data:
Divisions 19, 20, 21, 22, 26, 27 and 30 are not published because of dominating enterprises, but are included in manufacturing (C). Division 33 is not published for the export turnover index, but it is included in the index for manufacturing (C).
The data is confidential as it is flagged when sent to Eurostat (for example all euro area and non-euro area indices are flagged confidential).

A release schedule for the coming year, specifying precise dates of release, is published in the Release Calendar in December by Statistics Finland.

The release dates are available on the Internet (https://www.stat.fi/en/future-releases).

The results are released simultaneously to all interested parties on predefined days on the home page of the Index of turnover in industry (https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/tlv).
No one has prior access to the statistics before their general release. There is no internal governmental access to data before their release to the public. No ministerial commentary is attached to released data.

Series are transmitted to Eurostat 45 days after the end of the reference period. Series are transmitted to Eurostat during the same day they are published in Finland. The transmission is done via Edamis web portal by using SDMX coding system.

Monthly.

A monthly publication is made available to the media and the public free of charge. The indices are published monthly on the Internet (https://stat.fi/en/statistics/tlv.)

A monthly publication is made available to the media and the public free of charge. The indices are published monthly on the Internet (https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/tlv).

The quality description of the statistics, as well as concepts and definitions, are available on the homepage of the Index of turnover in industry.

Indices and revisions are published in the StatFin-databank of Statistics Finland (https://statfin.stat.fi/PXWeb/pxweb/en/StatFin/). Information published:

• Original index series
• Working day adjusted index series
• Seasonally adjusted index series
• Trend series
• Annual change of the original index series, %
• Cumulative annual change of the original index series, %
• Three month moving annual change of the original index series, %
• Annual change of the working day adjusted index series, %
• Cumulative annual change of the working day adjusted index series, %
• Three month moving annual change of the working day adjusted index series, %
• Change of the seasonally adjusted index series from the previous month, %

Some of the above mentioned data is also published as quarterly, semiannual and annual aggregates. Revisions are published from the original, working day adjusted and seasonal adjusted index series. A revision is presented as the difference between percentage point changes found in the first and the latest release.

Statistics Finland's researcher services offer unit-level data, i.e. micro data, for scientific studies and statistical surveys. The conditions and rules with respect to data access can be found on the home page http://stat.fi/tup/mikroaineistot/index_en.html.

Data is sent monthly to Eurostat.

Dissemination on request
Tailored tables and data files are provided for a fee.

The documentation on methodology and sources used in preparing statistics is available on the Internet (https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/tlv).

Advance notice of major changes in methodology, source data, and statistical techniques.
Advance notice is given to the public on the statistics website https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/tlv when major changes are introduced in methodology, sources, and statistical techniques.  In the case of major changes, briefings for the main users and press will be organised.

The documentation on quality management is available on the Internet (https://www.stat.fi/en/statistics/documentation/tlv).

Monthly follow-up of revisions is available for public within every release and in the Statfin-databank index of turnover in industry

Quality policy
The main lines of quality management at SF are defined in the handbook Quality Guidelines for Official Statistics. There is also a group for the management of quality and processes at SF. The group reports to the DG. Statistical Methods unit takes care of methodology for quality assurance e.g. in sampling and editing-imputation process.
SF develops its activities according to the Total Quality Management principles. It has been influenced by, among other things, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) excellence model, the United Nations’ Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and Handbook of Statistical Organization, as well as the European Statistics Code of Practice. The quality criteria of OSF are harmonised with the respective criteria of the European Statistical System.

Impartiality of statistics
Section 11 of the Finnish Statistics Act contains the requirement that statistics should be as reliable as possible, give a truthful picture, and make use, if possible, of uniform concepts, definitions, and classifications, as well as be timely. Similar provisions can be found in EU legislation. The Statistics Act, the Statistics Finland Act, and the Council of State Decree on Statistics Finland (1063/2002) and several other legal provisions support SF’s professional independence:
• Section 3 of the Statistics Finland Act decrees that the internal organisation of SF is defined in internal Rules of Procedure which are decided by SF’s Director General (DG);
• Section 1 of the Council of State Decree on SF gives the DG the right to manage the activities and finances of SF;
• Section 5 of the Council of State Decree lays down that the DG shall be appointed by the Council of State for a fixed term. The nomination is made after open competition. The Decree also gives the DG the right to appoint the staff of SF, including directors of the departments as well as other staff members unless the decision-power has been delegated in the Rules of Procedure to some other official of SF;
• Section 10 of the Statistics Act provides that data processing shall take place in accordance with good statistical practice and the international recommendations and procedures generally applied in the field of statistics.

Selection of sources, methodology, and modes of dissemination
The selection of sources, methodology and modes of dissemination of SF statistics are decided by SF alone. According to the Statistics Act, the choice of data sources, statistical techniques, and methods of dissemination should be based on statistical considerations (Sections 3, 10, 11, and 12). There are also responsibilities regarding cost-efficiency and the response burden of data collections (Section 4).

Guidelines for staff behavior
On the basis of international recommendations SF has confirmed its own Guidelines on Professional Ethics. All employees are given a copy of this handbook.
An internal ethical board meets regularly and reports on its decisions and discussions on the intranet open to all staff of SF.

The overall quality of the index of turnover in industry is good.

Quality work in Statistics Finland
The top management of Statistics Finland has made several self-assessments in line with the EFQM model. There have also been external audits by  e.g. the EU and IMF experts. Processes are in place to monitor the quality of the statistical process and the processes of individual statistics. Quality considerations are an integral part of the planning and evaluation of the statistical programme.
The process owner of statistical production and it’s supporting group monitor the quality and steer the standardisation of work processes.
Statistics Finland has an internal quality audit system. The main objectives are to evaluate the ways of working, methods and techniques. An audit is carried out by an audit team of experts who are external in the sense that they do not have any direct connection with the production process in question. About 8 audits are carried out yearly in Statistics Finland.

The information is used for the follow-up and analysis of the development of the business statistics in Eurostat, in the European Central Bank, in some international organizations and Finland's public administration and area developing. The economic life and the research institutions use information to the evaluation of the market's and the competitors' development. The Trend Indicator Of Output and Quarterly national accounts use Index of turnover in industry as their source material in Statistics Finland.

Co-operation between SF and important users with regard to the relevance of statistics and the users’ needs consists of an extensive feedback system and co-operative working groups with the main users, such as users of national accounts. There are regular meetings of SF directors and experts with the users, even at the senior management level. Users are usually also invited to participate in discussions concerning the establishment of new statistics or revisions of existing ones.
In addition, there are specific feedback systems for receiving the users’ opinions at SF. These systems consist of an anonymous feedback channel on the web, media monitoring, surveys among different user groups for the evaluation SF’s performance, user surveys, and a system for collecting and disseminating information that is strategically important for SF. Specific statistical products conduct their own user surveys and keep in regular contact with their main interest groups.

All the required series are produced.

Accuracy is good due to total data in use. Data updates over one year backwards. However the most notable changes affect the five most recent months.

Not applicable.

From the beginning of January 2019 time series modelling has been used for helping calculations of the indices at a lag of around 45 days. Time series modelling can also be used for some industries at a lag of 75 days in calculations of data. More information about the used forecast methods is available on the Methodological report.

Preliminary data on turnover in industry are published around 30 days after the end of the reference month on the industry level of total industry (NACE BCD). Indices at more accurate level on sections and division of the industry are published around 45 days after the end of the reference month. Series are transmitted to Eurostat during the same day they are published in Finland.

Reporting units should file their declarations to the tax authorities within 1 month and 12 days from the end of the reference month. Statistics Finland receives the data approximately two months after the end of the reference month.

National publication always on time. 100 percent of the deliveries to Eurostat on time (2022). 

European definitions are used and therefore the results are internationally comparable. The whole national territory is equally covered.

Indices are comparable over time.

Comparisons are made regularly, for example with the industrial production index and SBS data. The results have drawn closer in recent years. The yearly growth figures are especially similar with SBS, where the difference has been less than one percentage points at section level in the past couple of years. Some differences are likely to remain because of differences in statistical units used.
A lot of work has been put to insure coherent business statistics. Apart from the earlier actions, Statistics Finland has renewed the production of business statistics and the uniform business production system was adopted in 2014. The renewal increases the convergence between business statistics. The main changes are related to harmonising the industry and enterprise classifications, as well as to more extensive presentation of enterprise reorganisations.

Sources of differences between statistics are as follows:

Separate purposes of use of statistics
The differences of the statistics are caused by the length of their description period, by the publication delay and scope of the data content. For STS statistics the description period and publication delay are shorter and their data content smaller than of Business register and of Structural Business Statistics. The annual statistics represent a cross section on the entrepreneurship of the year in question. In STS statistics, the information has been temporally made comparable for company restructuring and for example for branch transfers in order for the indicators to represent the economic development of each industry at the time.
The annual statistics are completed from the ending of the examination year on about one year’s delay. The advance figures are completed on the delay of about half a year.

Calendar year vs. the accounting period
The turnover information of the Structural Business and Financial Statements Statistics are in accordance with the profit and loss account although with the practitioners the turnover consists of the yield of the profession. The turnover information is in these statistics from the accounting periods of enterprises which does not always correspond to the calendar year. While compiling the turnover index the sales are instead set on each calendar month irrespective of the accounting period. In the annual statistics accounting periods are fixed to that year where the period ends.

Comparability of concepts
The STS information does not fully correspond to the turnover of profit and loss account, because the turnover of the VAT data may contain items which do not belong to the turnover of the profit and loss account. Those can be the sales of fixed assets lots, other yields, incidental items etc. which can not completely be removed from the data.

The non-seasonally adjusted aggregates are always consistent with their sub-aggregates.

Total costs of survey data productions: 574¹ person-hours.
Total burden on respondents: 2 390² person-hours.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
¹ on year 2022

² on year 2019

Revisions are possible particularly during the following two months after the publications. Indices are revised according to changes in the data and when errors are corrected. 

Revisions are analysed for group and division levels monthly.

More detailed explanation can be found here http://tilastokeskus.fi/org/periaatteet/revisiokaytannot_en.html.

Comparisons are made monthly with the industrial production index.

Comparisons are made once a year between STS and SBS data. See more in the paragraph 15.3. of this metadata report. Classification changes introduce regular revisions and are taken into account once a year on one year delay when the Business register is final for the described year.

Because the Tax Administration's self-assessed tax data supplements also after the due date, the data is repeatedly updated for over a year.

Revised figures are published monthly according to the changes in data, but not announced as such. Methodological changes, errors in the newest release and the outstandingly significant revisions are announced at the time of change. Errors are corrected immediately. An annual overhaul of seasonal adjustment models is carried out.

Monthly follow-up of revisions is available for public within every release and in the Statfin-databank of Index of turnover in industry.

Administrative source (VAT data, which is basically a census) complemented by a statistical survey of the largest enterprises in each industry (cut-off sample). Data from the Finnish Customs is used for the breakdown of non-domestic turnover into euro area and non euro area indices.

Imputation is used for part of the missing data. The unit non response is corrected with one of the five simple rules, and imputed values are included into calculations only when the single imputation can be considered as reliable.

The most recent month's VAT data was introduced in April 2020 in indices published with a one and a half months delay. In the first sampling, the coverage of the turnover data is on average of 40 per cent, measured by the turnover of the companies. In the second sampling, the data is almost completely accumulated.

Monthly, collected data refer to full reference month.

A web questionnaire is used to collect the survey data. E-mail reminders are sent twice and thereafter the remaining non respondents are contacted by phone.

Validation level 0:
VAT data is checked when it arrives before any further actions. Plausibility checks are made for instance on the number of observations and range of variable values.

Validation level 1:
Automatic corrections are made to the false or defective observations of the VAT data. Also some critically flawed observations are removed etc. Some partial non response is handled by imputation using the auxiliary variables on the data. Manual examination concentrate mainly on the outlier observations.

Validation level 2-3:
The sums of data variables (main and auxiliary) of the most recent period are compared with those of previous versions. Revisions are analysed on micro and macro level. Yearly growth figures are compared with turnover figures of other domains. Also the special characteristic of each industry is taken into account while validating the data. Checks are made to Business Register data on micro level.

Transmission to Eurostat:
EWA (EDAMIS Web Application) is used for data transmission to Eurostat.

Type of index
The index is calculated using a panel of enterprise level data on turnover. The sum of turnover during the reference month is compared to the sum of turnover during the same month previous year and the year-on-year percentage change is calculated. The change is then used to calculate the index number of the latest reference month. This index number is corrected by the index of recently established enterprises and by the index of enterprises that have closed.
For the base year the index is calculated directly from the turnover sums. (Possible because by time of the base year change, the data is already fully accumulated for the year in question.)

From the beginning of January 2019 time series modelling has been used for helping calculations of the indices at a lag of around 45 days. Time series modelling is also used for some industries at a lag of 75 days in calculations of data. More information about the used forecast methods is available on the Methodological report.

Data editing
The combined micro level data, which includes both VAT and survey observations, is studied in detail for the most influential yearly changes in turnover. The erroneous figures are corrected. At this point, many of the mergers and split offs are detected. Most of the information of the mergers, split offs etc. come from administrative sources and are treated automatically. If detected in microlevel checking treatment is semiautomatic and the information have to be entered in the database manually. Also the most important closures and start-ups are ensured. A lot of time and effort is spent on this stage.

Estimates for non-response
Imputations are made by five simple methods for the latest and the second latest month. Note that only the most reliable values are taken into account.

Weighting
Since indices are based on total data, the compilation process does not include weighting. Whereas, in the panel technique, an enterprise gets the weight of its share of the sum of turnover in the panel for a given month. For the domestic turnover index, the weights are based on the share of domestic turnover and for the export turnover index, the weights are based on the share of export turnover. This is a fixed base year index.

From the beginning of January 2019 time series modelling has been used for helping calculations of the indices at a lag of around 45 days. Indirect method is used to produce the aggregate indices at the lag of around 45 days to ensure consistency.

Gross, working day adjusted, seasonally adjusted and trend series are produced with TRAMO/SEATS-method.

- Seasonal adjustment Software used is JDemetra+ 2.2.2
- The automated approach is used for those series for which it performs well. Others are modeled manually.
- Partial concurrent adjustment is applied.
- National calendar is in use.

The seasonal adjustment is performed on partially overlapping sub-periods, where structural breaks in seasonality patterns are detected. The overlapping period is set to twelve months in order to avoid breaks in the final seasonally adjusted series.

Information about the seasonal adjustment policies in Statistics Finland is available here: http://www.stat.fi/til/tramo_seats_en.html

None.