Statistics Portugal

National Accounts Department, Price Statistics Unit

Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE)

Avenida António José de Almeida, 1000-043 Lisboa, Portugal

The Service Producer Price Index (SPPI) tracks quarterly changes in output prices of services.

NACE Rev2.

At present, the SPPI covers the following NACE activities:

• H494 - Freight Transport by road and removal services;
• H50.1_H50.2 - Sea transport;
• H51 - Air transport;
• H53.1 - Postal activities under universal service obligation; and
• J61 – Telecommunications.

Price indexes covering M69.1_M69.2_M70.2 and M69,  Legal activities, accounting activities, book-keeping, auditing and tax consultancy activities; management consultancy activities are under development and expected to be available by the end of 2023.

Price indexes covering M71,  Architectural and engineering activities; technical testing and analysis are under development and expected to be available by the end of 2024.

A SPPI covering NACE L68.3 - Real Estate Activities on a Fee or Contract Basis, which is foreseen to be covered in the new FRIBS legislation package, is also calculated.

The service prices that are considered in the calculation of the SPPI are net of discounts, exclusive of VAT and reflect a quarter’s average.

Enterprises. For Telecommunications, the reporting unit is the supervision body of the sector.

The population of interest consists of all enterprises whose main activity falls into one of the NACE aggregations covered by the SPPI (see 3.3 above).

Produced SPPIs cover the whole country.

The indexes for Air transport and Telecommunications are available from the first quarter of 2010 onwards. For Postal services, indexes are available from the first quarter of 2005 onwards. The index for Freight Transport by Road is available from the first quarter of 2015.

Compiled SPPIs have their base 100 in 2015.

Indices, which are based on ratios of prices expressed in euros.

The reference period of the SPPIs is the quarter of a year.

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 SPPIs. The legal basis for the collection, compilation and dissemination of SPPIs 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.

Data are transmitted by Statistics Portugal to Eurostat on a quarterly basis to be integrated in the calculation of European Union and Monetary Union aggregates.

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.

The SPPIs are not published by Statistics Portugal and, as such, are not present in its release calendar.

The SPPIs are not published. There is no release calendar for this dataset.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat though the eDamis application using the SDMX format.

Quarterly.

The SPPI data are not published by Statistics Portugal.

Not available.

Not available.

Not available.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat only (for use in European aggregates).

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

Not available (see 11.1).

The main user of the produced SPPIs is Eurostat.

Not available.

This data set is not yet fully compliant with STS Regulation requirements. Work is being made to address this issue and to improve the coverage of produced SPPIs indices.

For Postal activities and Telecommunications, weights and prices data is provided by the only provider of universal mail services and by a regulatory authority, respectively. The data provided is very detailed and of good quality. Several data editing checks, which aim at minimizing non-sampling errors, have been implemented at various steps of SPPI production.

For Postal activities under universal service obligation and Telecommunications, all population of enterprises and of products is covered. For Air transport, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) sample of prices has been used as a proxy for the SPPI. As these have been chosen purposively, it is not possible to derive any sampling error.

In the SPPI for Air Transport, 81 prices are collected monthly. The sample of enterprises covers 81% of the total turnover for this industry. Tracked prices refer to the flights with the most passengers, using information from ANA (the Portuguese Airport Authority).

In the SPPI for Freight Transport by Road, the model pricing method is used, with a sample of around 500 respondents. Around 5000 price quotations are collected every quarter. A cut-off (non-probabilistic) sampling method is used, which could lead to bias, since only the largest companies are present in the sample. However, this hypothesis has been tested, and it has been concluded that this selection introduces no bias in the quarterly variations of the index.

For Postal activities and Telecommunications the response rate is 100% (see 13.1 above). For Sea and Air transport it is not possible to have an idea of the magnitude of non-sampling errors associated with the compilation of the SPPI.

In the SPPI for Freight Transport by Road, non-response arises when a company is unable to answer to any price quotation asked. This means that it only tranports products which are not available in the survey. The response rate is usually close to 80%. Quotations with no match in adjacent quarters are imputed with a regression tree algorithm. Besides, since the model pricing approach is applied, non-sampling error may arise if the quotations asked differ from the usual freight services carried by companies. In order to mitigate this issue, questions are based on the answers provided in the Statistics Portugal's road freight transport survey.

As a rule, the SPPIs are produced not later than three months after the end of the reference quarter.

Statistics Portugal is committed to comply with STS Regulation timeliness requirements. However, due to resource constrains, the deadlines are sometimes not possible to be met. This issue has been recently addressed by Statistics Portugal with the addition of more human resources to the project and, as such, the timeliness and punctuality of produced SPPIs are expected to improve in future.

The Portuguese SPPIs do not have a regional desegregation. Coherence across the different European countries producing this dataset is ensured by STS Regulations.

The SPPIs are comparable over time.

Derived data for some activities are compared with information stemming from the CPI prices survey. Where possible, other sources of information, taken from the regulatory bodies and dominant service providers, are used to cross-validate the SPPIs and underlying rates of change.

Statistics Portugal does not publish higher-level aggregates, as such internal coherence cannot be tested.

The cost of the statistical operation is considered to be low. Likewise, respondents’ burden is also considered to be low (e.g., for the SPPI on Telecommunications, prices and weights’ information is taken directly from the regulatory and supervision body). However, no concrete information as to the cost and burden of the SPPIs is available.

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 here (after the page is accessed, click on Revisions policy). In case of revisions, they are applied to both the national data (which is not currently released) and the data sent to Eurostat.

Data is not subject to systematic revisions. However, data are revised whenever there is a change in the base year or whenever there are methodological changes (e.g., changes in the classification system of activities). Extraordinary revisions are carried out whenever there is a mistake or an error found in the data or whenever a new or improved data source is available for the compilation of the SPPIs.

The SPPIs are based on administrative data sources, email and direct enquiries to enterprises.

For Postal services, Telecommunications and Freight Transport by Road the data is collected on a quarterly basis. For Air transport services, the data is collected monthly.

For Postal services and Telecommunications, prices data is sent quarterly by email to Statistics Portugal. Weights data for these two SPPIs is also obtained through email enquiries. For Air transport services, prices are collected monthly through a questionnaire and obtained through email.

For Freight Transport by Road, a survey is sent quarterly to the companies present in the sample.

Final data files are validated through the SDMX Converter, which converts csv files into SDMX format.

For the lower-level aggregation stages, the SPPIs predominantly apply the geometric mean (Jevons) formula. The SPPIs are compiled as Laspeyres index (higher-level aggregation formula), whose base year is changed every five years. Turnover figures, are taken from the Simplified Business Information (SBI) data reporting system. Turnover figures are used as weights for the aggregation of enterprises. The SBI data reporting system is compulsory to all businesses operating in Portugal, and it is continuously updated.

The SPPIs are not subject to working day or seasonal adjustments.

No further comment.