Hungarian Central Statistical Office (HCSO)

Statistics Directorate

Business Statistics Department

Register Section

Postal address: H-1525 Budapest P.O.B. 51, Hungary

The Quarterly Business Demography data collection covers the following two indicators:

• Business Registrations (BURE)
• Business Bankruptcies (BUBA)

The statistics is based on existing administrative data from the Hungarian statistical business register.

NACE Rev. 2

The data covers sections B to S (excluding Public administration and defence, compulsory social security - O, and Activities of membership organisations - S94)

Registrations are defined as the number of entered legal units in the register at any time during the reference quarter, according to the respective administrative or legal procedure. The registration of a business signals primarily an intention to engage in business activity but is not yet an enterprise birth which means the commencement of actual business activities with turnover, investment, employment etc.

Bankruptcies are defined as the number of legal units that have started the procedure of being declared bankrupt, by issuing a court declaration, at any time during the reference quarter. The court declaration may be provisional and does not always mean termination of an activity.

As regards the definitions of variables used in practice of the HCSO the Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 is the standard source.

Legal unit

All businesses are covered in the population; sole proprietors are also included. It is based on national administrative sources.

Territory of Hungary, the whole national area is covered.

Data are available from 2010 in the dissemination database (previously known as BD 9Q PSSBS dataflow).

As data are reported to Eurostat in absolute values, this Concept is not applicable.

The unit of measue is "pure number" of registrations and declarations of bankruptcies.

Quarter

At European level:

• Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics concerning short term statistics.
• Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics concerning short term statistics. (General Implementing Act)
• STS data requirements overview June 2021
• STS data requirements by country size June 2021

 All relevant regulations can be found in the STS section on Eurostat’s website under Statistics => Short-term business statistics => Legislation

At national level:

• The Act CLV of 2016 on Statistics (the Hungarian Statistical Law)
• Government Decree on the National Statistical Data Collection Programme enacting the surveys of reference period.

Additional information in English can be found here.

Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics concerning short term statistics.

At European level:

• Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics concerning short term statistics.
• Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics concerning short term statistics. (General Implementing Act)

All relevant regulations can be found in the STS section on Eurostat’s website under Statistics => Short-term business statistics => Legislation

At national level:

• The Act CLV of 2016 on Statistics (the Hungarian Statistical Law);
• Act CXII of 2011 on Informational self-administration and freedom of information.
• Additional information in English can be found here.
• The confidentiality policy of HCSO is available on its website.

HCSO ensures confidentiality for all the data reported by data providers and the exclusive use of the data for statistical purposes. We disseminate only aggregated data in full compliance with the rules of confidentiality. Individual data, as well as aggregated data consisting of fewer than 3 enterprises are regarded as confidential and therefore not published. Researchers have access to de-identified data sets and to anonymised micro data for scientific purposes with appropriate legal and methodological guaranties in place. As for the employees, they can work with datasets in their competence with registered and controlled access rights. For details see Information on confidentiality for data providers on the website of HCSO.

All of the features of dissemination activity are consistent with the Dissemination and Communication Policy of Hungarian Central Statistical Office. In the elaboration of this document the

• The Act CLV of 2016 on Statistics (the Hungarian Statistical Law)
• Act CXII of 2011 on Right of Informational Self-Determination and Freedom of Information and
• Regulation 223/2009/EC of EP and Council on European Statistics provided the most important legal basis. Furthermore, Dissemination Policy is in line with the Quality Declaration of ESS, the Code of Practice and Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics.

(Since the last update of Dissemination Policy of HCSO a new statistical law has been adopted in Hungary and the European Statistical law has been amended, but the changes do not affect the principals of Dissemination Policy.)

HCSO has a public Dissemination calendar that contains the dissemination dates of all First releases. The public dissemination calendar (Catalogue) on the website of HCSO provided information not only the first releases but the analyses, methodological publications, promotional publications, reports, statistical reflections, yearbooks and pocketbooks. Both calendars are prepared in line with the annual dissemination programme.

A public dissemination calendar of the first releases is accessible and it can be downloaded in Excel format by everyone via the website of HCSO. It provides information about publish date, the date of any modification, the title of publication, the reference period or date and the date of inclusion in the database.

The data in first releases, in dissemination database and in other tables are open for everyone after the publication.

Monthly for national releases, currently quarterly for transmissions to Eurostat.

No first release.

No electronic or paper publications.

Dissemination database – STATINFO

In HCSO the following four data access channels are available only for researchers for scientific purposes. The HCSO performs a researcher accreditation procedure for all data requests for these four data access channels.

• Safe Centre access

The HCSO offers access to deidentified microdata sets for scientific purposes in the safe environment of the Safe Centre operated by the HCSO in Budapest.

• Remote access

The HCSO offers access to deidentified microdata sets for scientific purposes in the safe environment of the remote access points operated by the HCSO under the same access conditions as the Safe Centre access.

• Remote execution

For scientific purposes, the HCSO produces the requested research outputs inside its own safe environment based on the specifications/syntax files provided by the researcher.

• Release of anonymised microdata sets

By using this data access channel, the HCSO provides anonymised microdata sets for the researcher for scientific purposes.

QBD data (absolute values) are transmitted to Eurostat within 40 days after the reference period. The transmission is done by eDAMIS using the SDMX format.

There are methodological notes on HCSOs website.

User-oriented quality reports on statistical domains are prepared in the framework of methodological documentation and are published as metainformation on the HCSO website:  Methodological documentation.

An internal HCSO regulation is in place regarding the preparation of producer-oriented quality reports for each statistical domain on a yearly basis.

In case of some statistical domains – concerning first releases – quality check is carried out and documented each month for the management of HCSO. However, this report is not published.

The HCSO Quality Policy lays out the principles and commitments related to the quality of statistics. The documentis consistent with the goals set out in the Mission and Vision statements andwith the principles of the European Statistics Code of Practice and is publicly available on the HCSO website.

The European Statistics Code of Practice is available on the website of the HCSO. Also, HCSO together with the member-organisations of the Hungarian Official Statistical Service created a National Statistics Code of Practice based on the European Statistics Code of Practice.

Quality Guidelines are meant to ensure the quality of the statistical processes. The document has been in place since 2007 (1st revision in 2009, 2nd revision in 2014 and 3rd revision is currently ongoing). The latest version (2014) is available on the HCSO website.

Procedures are in place in order to ensure updated documentation on product quality. (See above about Quality Documentation in 10.7) Apart from the internal reports, quality reports are regularly provided to Eurostat as well.

Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics concerning short term statistics. The General Implementing Act prescribes the scope, the level of detail the deadlines and also the implementation of definitions of variables. The processing of data production has been developed according to these regulations.

The concepts and methods are based on European legislation. The main international user is Eurostat. The principal domestic users are the National Central Bank of Hungary and Ministries. The relevant internal users are the National Accounts department and the Business statistics department. External users are researchers, press, citizens.

Not available.

The level of detail is in accordance with the EBS (European business statistics) regulation.

The statistics is based only on administrative data that arrives from the single-window system. Thus the data is completely covered.

The quarterly business demography indicators are “event based” statistics based on complete enumeration.

Estimations of late registrations and late declarations of bankruptcies are not applied.

Q+40 days

The publications are in agreement with the dissemination calendar. Data transmissions were adhered to the scheduled dates.

The whole country is treated in a uniform manner from a statistical point of view. The same statistical concepts can be applied for all of the area. All data sources cover the regions fully. There are no difficulties concerning the geographical comparability.

Quarterly business demography data are available from 2010, the definitions of registrations and declarations of bankruptcies are unchanged, the time series are comparable.

Registrations are defined as the number of entered legal units in the register at any time during the reference quarter, according to the respective administrative or legal procedure. The registration of a business signals primarily an intention to engage in business activity but is not yet an enterprise birth which means the commencement of actual business activities with turnover, investment, employment etc.

Bankruptcies are defined as the number of legal units that have started the procedure of being declared bankrupt, by issuing a court declaration, at any time during the reference quarter. The court declaration may be provisional and does not always mean termination of an activity.

For quarterly business demography variables, the aggregate is coherent with the lower level NACE activities

There is not known internal inconsistency, the aggregates of lower level NACE activities are consistent.

The quarterly business demography statistics are based on existing administrative sources, there is no extra burden to businesses.

Cost (NSI hours per year – 2022): 50

HCSO published its renewed revision policy in 2018. The revision policy is in line with the following conceptual frameworks:

• the official statistical principles of the UN
• the European Statistics Code of Practice
• the “ESS guidelines on revision policy for PEEIs”, which have been approved by the European Statistical Committee in February, 2012
• the quality guidelines of the HCSO
• the Dissemination and Communication Policy of the HCSO
• finally, the HCSO takes into consideration the deadlines of mandatory international data transmissions and publication
• HCSO considers any change in the value of already published data as data revision. Revisions take place for a number of distinct reasons, which tend to break into four groups:
• incorporation of better source data (e.g. replacement of first/provisional estimates based on expert judgements, or as a result of benchmarking)
• capturing routine recalculations (e.g. updating the base period)
• reflection of improved methodology (e.g. changes in concepts, definitions or classifications)
• correction of errors 

Taking into account the various causes of revisions and the different frequencies of publications, the HCSO – in correspondence with international guidelines – distinguishes the following types of revisions:

• Routine revisions: routine revisions are changes in published data which are related to the regular statistical business process. Routine revisions mainly occur when the incorporation of late information (new or the correction of already obtained) modifies the already published results or in the case of benchmarking.

Routine revisions are conducted periodically, according to a schedule drawn up in advance. With some sets of statistics (e.g. in foreign trade), a number of revisions are needed to obtain final results, while in other cases the provisional results are replaced by final data in the course of one single revision. Routine revisions barely affect the applied methodology, and only a few periods (some months or quarters) back in time are revised and longer revisions take place at a lower frequency, e.g. annually.

• Major/methodological revisions: Major revisions are changes in published data, often substantial, which are due to changes in definitions, classifications and methodologies. Updating of the weights of the base year of an index series, the availability of a new structuralsource that is only collected at long intervals (5 to 10 years), such as the census, and the entry into force of a new legal act may also cause major revisions.

Major revisions are planned very well in advance and users are informed beforehand on the forthcoming major revisions. They are less frequent than routine revisions and occur only every 5 to 10 years. Since major revisions affect a large part of the time series and sometimes even the complete time series, it is necessary to backcast time series, otherwise major revisions would produce breaks and inconsistencies in them.

• Unplanned revisions: Unplanned or unscheduled revisions are those that are not foreseen (as opposed to planned revisions), because they are a result of unforeseeable events and therefore it is usually not possible to pre-announced them in advance. As unscheduled revisions can undermine confidence in the quality of official statistics, HCSO is committed to avoiding as much as possible unscheduled revisions and to limit them to the case of important errors (whose correction results in significant improvement regarding data quality). Unscheduled revisions are communicated to the users in a transparent manner.

HCSO makes its general and domain specific revision policies publicly available on its official website. HCSO applies the general policy’s principles to all of its statistics (including the STS data transmitted to the Eurostat). Although subject matter statistics may have specificities regarding their revision practices, they have to be fully compliant with the general principles.

HCSO notifies users about forthcoming revisions in time and indicates their date and time in the revision calendar

No routine or major revisions are planned in the quarterly business demography statistics

The data source is the Hungarian statistical business register. Only administrative data is used for compiling the business registrations and bankruptcy declarations indicators.

Daily

The Data collection is based on the single-window system connecting the business register with the Company Registry Court. The data exchange is based on XML messages transmitted daily via IBM MQ software, and the next step is to disassemble the XML message and load it into the database. These steps are fully automated by computer software. The business register does not have direct access to the administrative database, the data is being sent by the administrative source.

Collected data are checked by IT tools. The XML messages with logical errors do not get loaded into the business register.

The data are transformed into SDMX form by SDMX Converter tool.

The data compilation is done by counting the business registration and declaration of bankruptcies events in the business register. If a newly registered legal unit enters the business register, the change event is logged, as well as it is logged if a legal unit declares bankruptcy. During compilation these events are counted, aggregated to 2 digits level of NACE Rev. 2, and transmitted to Eurostat.

Seasonal Adjustment

Seasonal adjustment is not used for quarterly business demography.

There is no other comment.