Central Statistics Office

Services Producer Prices

Central Statistics Office

Skehard Road

Cork

Ireland

 The Services Producer Price Index (SPPI) is made up of a set of individual price indices that measure changes in the average level of prices charged by producers for a selected range of services supplied to businesses and government. In most cases these services are provided to business customers only.

The individual price indices are aggregated together to create a “services  industry” index that is limited in coverage.

NACE Rev. 2.

49.4 Freight transport by road and removal services
50.1+50.2 Sea and coastal transport
51 Air transport
52.1+52.24 Warehousing, storage and cargo handling
53.1+53.2 Postal and courier activities
62 Computer programming, consultancy and related activities
69.1+69.2+70.2 Legal, accounting, public relations and business management and consultancy
71.1+71.2 Architecture, engineering and technical testing
73.1+73.2 Advertising, media representation and market research
78 Employment activities
80 Security and investigation activities
81.2 Industrial and building cleaning

The Services Producer Price Index covers services delivered by resident business service providers to economic units or persons representing economic units.

Enterprise.

The statistical population is all enterprises whose main business activity is classified to one of the Nace Rev. 2 codes listed in section 3.3.

Republic of Ireland

Data are available from the first quarter of 2006 onwards.

The base year is 2015=100.

Index.

Quarter.

(EBS) Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on 27 November 2019 and the Commission implementing Regulation 2020/1197.

This statutory survey is conducted under the S.I. No. 2/2023 - Statistics (Producer Prices Survey) Order 2023 made under the Statistics Act, 1993 and Article 6(1)(a) and (b) and (2)(j) of Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 as amended by Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/1704 of 14 July 2021.

Section 34 of the 1993 Statistics Act states:

The Office may provide, for statistical purposes only, information obtained in any way under this Act or the repealed enactments, in such form that it cannot be directly or indirectly related to an identifiable person or undertaking, to such persons and subject to such charges, conditions and restrictions as the Director General may determine.

Data is shared with Eurostat as provided for under the relevant European legislation.

The provision on statistical confidentiality is regulated by Sections 32 and 33 of the 1993 Statistics Act.  

Section 32 states:

All information furnished by a person, undertaking or public authority under this Act shall be used only for statistical compilation and analysis purposes. 

Section 33 states:

(1) No information obtained in any way under this Act or the repealed enactments which can be related to an identifiable person or undertaking shall, except with the written consent of that person or undertaking or the personal representative or next-of-kin of a deceased person, be disseminated, shown or communicated to any person or body except as follows: 

            (a) for the purposes of a prosecution for an offence under this Act;

            (b) to officers of statistics in the course of their duties under this Act;

            (c) for the purposes of recording such information solely for the use of the Office in such form and manner as is provided for by a contract in writing made by the Director General which protects its confidentiality to his satisfaction    

 (2) The Office may, for statistical purposes only, assign codes derived from information collected under this Act classifying undertakings listed in the administrative systems of other public authorities by economic activity and size (persons engaged) categories. 

 (3) The Taoiseach may by order prescribe such further prohibitions on the disclosure of identifiable records or information obtained under this Act or the repealed enactments for such periods as may be prescribed. 

 (4) Nothing in this Act shall be construed to require any person or undertaking to provide information in relation to a matter on which information was sought in circumstances that would entitle the person or undertaking to decline to give the information in a civil proceeding in any court or on grounds of privilege.

Confidentiality is not an issue due to the level of aggregation in the release.

A four month advance release calendar is published on the CSO website.

 https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/releasecalendar/.

There is no advance dissemination to data users. Results are released via the CSO website at 11.00am on the day of publication.

No prior access is granted.

Data is transmitted to Eurostat on or just before the day of national release in SDMX format using EDAMIS.

Quarterly.

None.

Data on Service Producer Price Indices are released on the following locations on the CSO website: https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/prices/servicesproducerpriceindex/.

The quarterly SPPI data for the 2015=100 series is available in Tables SPP02 and SPP04 published at https://data.cso.ie/.

Annual versions of the data are available in Tables SPP01 and SPP03 also at https://data.cso.ie/.

Microdata is not disseminated.

Data are sent to Eurostat to be used in European aggregates and/or to be released as national data.

The Standard Report on Methods and Quality for SPPI is available here:

https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/qualityreports/servicesproducerpriceindex/.

Methodological information on SPPI’s is available from the Eurostat OECD Methodological guide for developing producer price indices for services which can be viewed at

http://www.oecd.org/std/prices-ppp/eurostat-oecd-methodological-guide-for-developing-producer-price-indices-for-services-9789264220676-en.htm .

Additional methodological information can be found on the website of the Voorburg Group on Services Statistics at https://www.voorburggroup.org/.

Methodological information on Short Term Statistics can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/1916593/1917176/KS-BG-06-001-EN.pdf/973bf1c8-e598-4228-9d18-2f7704a95e45.

The CSO Standard Report on Methods and Quality for SPPI is available here: https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/qualityreports/servicesproducerpriceindex/.

The edits are range edits comparing the prices with the corresponding prices of the previous quarter.

A review of the SPPI process is currently underway as part of a redevelopment which will extend to coverage of the SPPI to meet the new EBS requirements. The review covers all aspects of the SPPI survey, including sample design, respondent management, aggregation, imputation etc.

There are three main uses of SPPI; as a short-term indicator of the business cycle and to provide deflators for both National Accounts and the Monthly Services Index. 

The indices are also transmitted to Eurostat every quarter.

Not available.

Indices have been developed for all sectors specified in the European Business Statistics Regulation(EC) No 2019/2152, At present the quality of indices for the telecommunications (61) and information service activities (63) are deemed insufficient for publication. Indices for all other sectors specified in the Short Term Statistics Regulation are transmitted to Eurostat quarterly.

CSO has not estimated the accuracy of the service producer price index.

Sampling error for the index has not been estimated.

There is very little non-sampling error due to non-response or processing errors. The amount of error in the data returned by the surveyed enterprises has not been estimated. The unweighted mean response rate for the 4 quarters of 2022 was 82%.

The results are published at or before T + 77 days.

The timeliness target (see 15.1) is achieved every quarter with rare exceptions.

It is possible to compare the Irish indices with those of other European countries using the Nace Rev. 2 industry classification system.

Comparisons can be made quarterly back to Quarter 1 2006.

It would be possible to compare indices in some industries with the equivalent industries in the Consumer Price Index. But the results should be somewhat different as the SPPI is for business to business prices only.

Aggregates are consistent with their sub-aggregates.

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-rbb/responseburdenbarometer2021/

The results are generally not revised. Exceptions are in case of discovering an error in calculation, or if an important respondent's data arrives after publication. The same revision policy is applied nationally and in transmissions to Eurostat.

Data revisions are made to the historic tables in subsequent publications.

Approximately 200 enterprises are surveyed by email each quarter. The frame on which the sample was based was the CSO Business Register. These enterprises are asked to update price observations for a list of specific items they sell. These items were agreed with the enterprises during a canvassing stage. In some cases the enterprises specify the hourly rate for a particular type of employee.

The surveyed enterprises return a total of approximately 1200 such price observations.

All indices in the series are based on price observations collected on a quarterly basis, using either the average price per quarter or the price on the 15th of the middle month of the reference period.

Prices used in the compilation of these indices are: 

Exclusive of VAT

Inclusive of surcharges (such as for fuel)

The Air Transport index is constructed using data collected by the Consumer Price Section.

The Employment and Human Resource Activities index is constructed using a combination of survey data  and data from the Earnings, Hours and Employment Cost Survey.

Quarterly

Data are collected by electronic form. 

Email and telephone calls are used to seek the return of forms from non-respondents.

Edits compare values against previous returns (range checks). If differences exceed specified thresholds, an edit is raised. These are then analysed and records are corrected as appropriate. 

The prices returned for each enterprise are aggregated into an elementary index for that enterprise, using weights supplied by the enterprise at the canvassing phase of compilation.

The elementary indices for each enterprise are aggregated into an industry index using the enterprises' turnover figures as weights.

The industry indices are aggregated into an overall Services Prices Index using the industries' 2015 Annual Services Inquiry total turnover as weights.

No adjustments are made

None