Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic

External Trade Statistics Department

Lamačská cesta 3/C, 840 05 Bratislava

The main objective of the trade in goods statistics by enterprise characteristics (TEC) is to bridge two major statistical domains which have traditionally been compiled and used separately, business statistics and international trade in goods statistics (ITGS). Specifically, this new domain was created to answer questions such as:

• What kind of businesses are behind the trade flows of goods?
• What is the contribution of a particular activity sector to trade?
• What is the share of small and medium-sized enterprises to total trade?
• What is the share of enterprises that trade with a certain partner country and the amount of trade value they account for?

For this purpose, the trade in goods between countries is broken down by economic activity, size-class of enterprises, trade concentration, geographical diversification and products traded. The new information is used to carry out more sophisticated kinds of analysis, e.g. to evaluate the role of European companies in the context of globalisation or to assess the impact of international trade in goods on employment, production and value added, essential in a globalised world where economies are increasingly interconnected.

Available datasets

TEC data are grouped into ten datasets, each one focusing on a specific aspect:

1. Trade by activity sector and enterprise size class — Trade by activity sector and employment size class shows the contributions of economic activities and size classes (measured in terms of number of employees) to total trade. This allows the impact of international trade on employment to be analysed and the importance of small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) to be estimated.

2. Concentration of trade by activity — International trade being typically dominated by a few businesses, this indicator shows the share of the total trade accounted for by the top 5, 10, 20, etc. companies.

3. Trade by partner country and activity — Trade by partner country shows how many companies were trading with certain partner countries or country zones, and the value they accounted for. This indicator enables the most typical export or import markets to be identified.

4. Trade by number of partner countries and activity — Trade by number of partner countries shows how geographically diversified the export markets are. For imports, it shows the number of countries from which goods are imported.

5. Trade by commodity and activity — Trade by commodity and activity sector allocates the trade of each commodity to the activity of the trading enterprise. This indicator shows which sectors were involved in the trading of each product group.

6. Trade by type of trader — This indicator provides information on how traders are involved in international trade. It shows the number of companies trading within only one flow or in both flows and the trade value these companies account for.

7. Trade by type of ownership — The type of ownership is referring to the concept of control and to affiliation of an enterprise. It indicates whether an enterprise is domestically or foreign controlled and, if domestically controlled, whether it has affiliates abroad or not. This indicator can be used to analyse the impact of globalisation on international trade and to estimate the importance of multinational companies for trade.

8. Trade by export intensity — Export intensity categorises enterprises according to the importance of foreign markets in their sales. It refers to the share of exports in total turnover.

9. Trade by activity sector — In comparison with trade by activity and enterprise size class (first dataset), this indicator provides more details on the activity sector (2- or 3-digit level) but does not contain information about the enterprise size.

10. Trade by partner country and size class — This indicator aims to give insights into the internationalisation of small- and medium sized enterprises. It complements indicator 3 on trade by partner country and activity by applying the same detailed breakdown of partner countries but categorising enterprises by size class instead of activity sector.

Classification of economic activities

Economic activities are classified according to the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE Rev. 2). NACE Rev. 2 is based on the fourth revision of the United Nations International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (ISIC Rev. 4). Within the international trade in goods statistics, the NACE classification refers to the economic activity of enterprises that are active in international trade in goods.

Product classification

As the TEC domain aims to categorise trade flows according to economic activities, product classifications which are based on the industrial origin of the goods are more suitable for analysis than classifications based on material of goods. For this reason, the Classification of Products by Activity (CPA) is used as the product classification in TEC. CPA is a European version of the United Nations Central Product Classification (CPC), but arranged so that each product heading is assignable to a single heading of the European activity classification, the NACE Rev. 2. CPA version 2008 is used for TEC data relating to the reference years 2012-2015. CPA version 2.1 is used since 2016 as reference year.

Country classification

The reporting and partner countries are classified according to the Nomenclature of countries and territories for the external trade statistics of the Community and statistics of trade between Member States, known as the Geonomenclature, in the Slovak data. An alpha-2 coding applies, which means that each country is identified with a two-letter alphabetical code. See the publication Geonomenclature applicable to European statistics on international trade in goods for more information.

All classifications and correspondence tables are available on Eurostats metadata server RAMON.

 TEC data cover all activity sectors, from sections A to U of the NACE Rev. 2 classification.

Trade value

The value of traded goods is calculated at the national frontier, on a FOB basis (free on board) for exports and a CIF (cost, insurance, freight) basis for imports. Hence, only incidental expenses (freight, insurance) are included and they are incurred for:

• exports in the part of the journey located on the territory of the country where the goods are exported from;
• imports in the part of the journey located outside the territory of the country where the goods are imported to.

Number of enterprises

The number of enterprises consists of a count of the number of enterprises involved in trade during at least a part of the reference period. For intra-EU trade, VAT data are used to identify the smallest traders (and to estimate their trade value), which are exempted from Intrastat reporting. These traders account for a limited share of the trade value. In line with the legal requirements, this share should not exceed 3 % of the total value of the intra-EU exports and 7 % of the total value of the intra-EU imports. However in terms of number of enterprises the smallest enterprises below threshold trade make the majority.

Partner country

Trade flows are broken down by partner country.

• For exports it is the country of destination of the goods. That is the last country to which it is known that, at the time of export, the goods are to be delivered.
• For imports, the definition of the partner country differs between Intrastat and Extrastat. For extra-EU imports it is the country of origin of the goods; for intra-EU imports it is the country (EU Member State) of consignment of goods.

Product

The product is the outcome of economic activity and the generic term used for goods and services.

Product classifications are designed to categorise goods and services that have common characteristics. They provide the basis for preparing statistics on the production, consumption, international trade and distributive trade. However, the scope of TEC is limited to the trade in goods.

Economic activity

The economic activity consists in offering goods and services on a given market. An activity is characterised by an input of products, a production process and an output of products. In other words, an economic activity is said to take place when resources such as equipment, labour, manufacturing techniques, information networks or products are combined, leading to the creation of specific goods or services.

Classifications of economic activities are designed to categorise data that can be related to the unit of activity. They provide the basis for preparing statistics of output, the various inputs to the production process, capital formation and the financial transactions of such units. Economic activities are classified according to NACE, the classification used to classify economic entities (enterprises, local units and similar statistical units). Within TEC, the NACE classification refers to the economic activity of traders, i.e. enterprises that are active in international trade.

Number of employees

The number of employees refers to the number of those persons who work for an employer and who have a contract of employment and receive compensation in the form of wages, salaries, fees, gratuities, piecework pay or remuneration in kind. A worker is considered to be a wage or salary earner of a particular unit if he receives a wage or salary from the unit regardless of where the work is done (in or outside the production unit).

The number of employees is a mandatory variable to be recorded in the business registers for each enterprise and local unit. According to the Business Register Regulation, the intention is to use the situation at the end of the year, which is also case of Slovak data. However, as the end date approach is not harmonised the annual average can also be used as reference.

Type of traders

In the context of the TEC data, the type of trader specifies the type of trade activity of the enterprise. It indicates whether the enterprise is involved only in exports or only imports or trade in both flows.

The type of trader aims to describe the heterogeneity of enterprises according to their involvement in trade.

Type of ownership

In the context of the TEC data, the type of ownership refers to the concept of control and to the affiliation of an enterprise. It indicates whether an enterprise is domestically or foreign controlled and if it is domestically controlled, whether it has affiliates abroad or not. In other words, the type of ownership refers to the delineation of enterprise groups and categorising them. In this context, the concept of control prevails as referred in article 3 (4) of the Business Register Regulation (EC) No 177/2008. This Regulation applies the European System of Accounts (ESA) definition for the control as set out in point 2.26 of Annex A to Regulation (EC) no 2223/96. The concept of control prevails also in the FATS Regulation and is defined as follows: "control shall mean the ability to determine the general policy of an enterprise by choosing appropriate directors, if necessary. In this context, enterprise A is deemed to be controlled by an institutional unit B when B controls, whether directly or indirectly, more than half of the shareholders voting power or more than half of the shares". This definition is consistent with the ESA definition.

The type of ownership aims to describe the heterogeneity of enterprises according to their global status. A distinction of enterprises into domestically and foreign controlled enterprises has specific interest because of the important role of foreign affiliates. Furthermore, if domestically controlled enterprises with own affiliates abroad are further distinguished from all domestically controlled enterprises, the population all of multinational enterprises can be identified. The information on domestically controlled enterprises with own affiliates abroad was not available in the Slovak Business Register.

Exports intensity

The exports intensity refers to the share of exports of turnover (ratio between exports and turnover).

Exports intensity categorises enterprises according to the importance of foreign markets in their sales. The recent developments in the area of global value chains have raised a question on the heterogeneity of enterprises. It has been traditionally assumed that enterprises in the same activity sector are homogenous in terms of their productivity as well as in generating value-added and employment. However, this may not be a valid assumption any more in the globalised economy as productivity, value-added and employment may depend on the international orientation of enterprises, i.e. their involvement and position in the global value chains. Enterprises with high exports intensity are often also large-scale importers.

Almost all intra- and extra-EU trade operators, which are recognised in the Slovak ITGS as an enterprise, consist of only one legal unit. It can be therefore stated that the statistical unit is the enterprise. Those legal units which are part of one enterprise, are not counted individually but together as one enterprise. It can be therefore stated that the statistical unit is the enterprise.

A link between the Business Register and the Foreign Trade Register containing intra- and extra-EU trade operators is established through the legal unit so trade data are linked to characteristics available in the Business Register for the enterprise and for legal units which are part of enterprises.

The statistical population should comprise all the enterprises involved in intra- and extra-EU trade flows. However, in practice, the linkage between the Trade Register and the Business Register is not systematically straightforward as there may be more complicated linkages or the linkage may not always provide expected outcomes. This relates in particular to the following cases:

• Intra-annual business demography changes;
• Large and complex businesses;
• Incomplete business register data; and
• VAT-groups.

Slovak TEC data are produced following the principle intra-EU/extra-EU trader operator is equal to an enterprise. Even if the results of the Business Register profiling are used the principle is valid for more than 99,95% operators.  

The reference population used in the compilation of TEC datasets relates to traders who have reported trade transactions under a valid ID number and were successfully matched with the Business Register. This means that the enterprise characteristics reported in the TEC datasets refer only to a part of total trade. Are out of scope:

• Adjustments for missing trade (trade below threshold and non-response in intra-EU trade; missing, delayed and incomplete records for extra-EU trade);
• Trade carried out by non-resident traders as such traders cannot be associated to an enterprise via the national Business Register; and
• Trade carried out by private individuals.

Slovakia

TEC data disseminated at European level

From 2012 as reference year

At national level

Slovak TEC data are available from the reference year 2005 onwards. They were provided on a voluntary basis.

Not applicable.

• Trade value in thousands of euros
• Number of enterprises

The reference period for compilation of TEC data is annual.

General statistical legislation

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European statistics

Intra-EU trade legislation (or Intrastat)

• Regulation (EC) No 638/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council
• Implementing Commission Regulation (EC) No 1982/2004

Extra-EU trade legislation (or Extrastat)

• Regulation (EC) No 471/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council
• Implementing Commission Regulation (EC) No 92/2010
• Implementing Commission Regulation (EC) No 113/2010

Business Registers legislation

• Regulation (EC) No 177/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a common framework for Business Registers for statistical purposes
• Implementing Commission Regulation (EC) No 192/2009
• Implementing Commission Regulation (EU) No 1097/2010

All regulations relevant for the European statistics on international trade in goods can be found in the publication Legislation on European statistics on international trade in goods or consulted from the ‘Legislation’ page of the ‘International trade in goods’ section on Eurostat website. All legal texts are also accessible online on Eur-Lex.

Not applicable.

Following the Statistical Act No 540/2001 Coll., as amended, confidential statistical data shall not be published or disclosed to anybody.

As TEC data contain confidential data, they are protected in order to comply with the Statistical Act and other legislation.

τ-ARGUS in combination with the manual procedures is used, with linked tables option, so as to guarantee that no confidential data can be disclosed from the tables, even if they are linked.

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 8.1 ‘Release calendar’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

Not applicable.

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 8.3 ‘Release policy - user access’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

Statistics by enterprise characteristics are updated once a year with a new reference year. Historical data are exceptionally revised.

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 10.1 ‘Dissemination format - News release’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 10.2 ‘Dissemination format - Publications’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 10.3 ‘Dissemination format - online database’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

Not available.

Not applicable

Not applicable

Not available.

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 10.6 ‘Documentation on methodology’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

100%

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 10.7 ‘Quality management - documentation’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

See item 11.1 ‘Quality assurance’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

See item 11.2 ‘Quality management - assessment’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 12.1 ‘Relevance - User Needs’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

TEC data are only disseminated by Eurostat. See item 12.2 ‘Relevance - User Satisfaction’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ for more details.

See item 12.3 ‘Completeness’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

See document TEC Quality indicators

See item 13.1 ‘Accuracy - overall’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

Not applicable.

Neither the international trade in goods statistics, nor the business registers are affected by errors related to sample surveys.

Not applicable.

See item 13.3 ‘Non-sampling error’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

See item 13.3.3 of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims- International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’

See document TEC Quality indicators

See document TEC Quality indicators

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

See item 14.1 ‘Timeliness’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

See document TEC Quality indicators

Not applicable.

See item 14.2 ‘Punctuality’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

See document TEC Quality indicators

See item 15.1 ‘Comparability - geographical’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

Not applicable.

Slovak TEC data for the reference year 2018 are compiled from ITGS data in the methodology of 2019, where the recording of aircraft in ITGS is based on a change in economic ownership and trade in electricity is based on data from energy statistics. The compilation of ITGS in natural gas in the gaseous state is based on the information from the transmission system operator and storage facilities operators, was also modified. These modifications of methodology are applied to the data for the reference years from 2012, which have not yet been transmitted.

Slovak TEC data for the reference years 2009 - 2017 are compiled from ITGS data in the methodology of 2018, and are therefore comparable within the TEC time series but with Slovak ITGS data.

The revisions of TEC data for the years 2012-2018 are being prepared

See item 15.3 ‘Coherence - cross domain’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

See item 15.4 ‘Coherence - internal’ of the related metadata ‘ext_tec_sims - International trade in goods – trade by enterprise characteristics (TEC)’.

TEC data are derived from the information made available by the international trade in goods statistics and the business statistics. No specific data collection is then necessary, which means that the burden is null for the respondents.

The cost of TEC data only relates to the compilation carried out by the Statistical Office of the SR.

No additional costs associated with the collection of TEC data nor burden on respondents incur.

TEC data are based on the final ITGS data and Business Register data, so there is no revision intended. However, if the major revision of ITGS are carried out then the TEC data will be revised as well. The major revision made in 2019 will be reflected in the revised data for the years 2012 – 2017 that are under preparation.

TEC data are only exceptionally revised  as the data are based on the final ITGS data and Business Register data.

Not applicable.

International trade in goods statistics by enterprise characteristics are derived from two data sources: the monthly detailed trade in goods data and data taken from the business registers.

Trade in goods data are collected on the basis of:

• a census for the intra-EU trade, the census units being the traders whose annual trade value is above the national Intrastat exemption threshold and who are then liable to submit an Intrastat declaration; and
• administrative forms, the customs declarations, for the extra-EU trade.

Note that missing data (exempted intra-EU traders, missing Intrastat declarations, incomplete or delayed customs declarations) are estimated by the National Statistical Authority in order to disseminate trade in goods data covering 100% of the trade and those estimates are part of the Slovak TEC data.

The national business registers serve as the sources for the enterprise characteristics. No samples are drawn from the registers, but the full registers are processed. Some differences in the coverage among the countries can occur. Different administrative sources depending on national law, as well as surveys, are used to update the business registers, and in some countries VAT thresholds for registration apply.

• Collection of trade in goods data: monthly
• Collection of Business Register data: monthly and yearly
• TEC data: Annual

Collection of trade in goods data

• For intra EU trade, any VAT-registered exporters/importers whose intra-EU trade exceeds the Intrastat exemption threshold (in Slovakia 400 000 EUR on dispatches and 200 000 EUR on arrivals) submit Intrastat declarations within 15 calendar days after the reference month. ITGS data are obtained by the Statistical Office of the SR from the Customs – the national authority responsible for Intrastat data collection in Slovakia.
• For extra-EU trade, exporters/importers are obliged to lodge customs declaration whenever they wish to place goods under a given customs procedure.
• Missing data such as trade of exempted intra-EU exporters/importers, missing Intrastat declarations, incomplete or delayed customs declarations are estimated.
• For calculations of trade with natural gas data on quantities from transmission system operator and from storage facilities operator are used. Unit values calculated from Intrastat and customs declarations regarding electricity and natural gas are used for computation of monetary values. Imputed trade in natural gas and electricity cannot be allocated neither importer nor exporter.

Collection of data for the Business Register

The maintenance of the Business register is based on various administrative and statistical data sources e.g. Social Insurance Agency, VAT register, statistical surveys etc. The frequency of updating the business registers depends on the kind of unit, the variable considered, the size of the unit and the source generally used for the update. As a general rule, key characteristics such as economic variables should be updated annually.

TEC data disseminated by Eurostat have passed the following quality checks:

• Intra-dataset checks: completeness of each dataset and uniqueness of the records, validity of the codes, validity of code combinations across the different dimensions, inter-record consistency checks;
• Inter-dataset checks: consistency of trade values and numbers of enterprises related to similar combinations across the datasets;
• Intra-domain check: check of the coherence between trade values published in TEC datasets and trade values coming from aggregated and detailed trade in goods data.

See the section ‘Data validation’ of the European business statistics compilers’ manual for international trade in goods statistics – trade by enterprise characteristics for information on the main validation rules implemented.

The assignment of ICO being Business Register ID to importers/exporters is done automatically when Intrastat and customs declarations are loaded into the ITGS database. However there are cases when ICO is not assigned either from methodological reasons (non-resident exporter/importer, VAT group) or because of erroneous ID number on the declaration. Such cases are analysed when preparing the ITGS data and whenever it is possible the erroneous ID numbers are corrected. Subsequently ITGS data are linked with Business Register data. The enterprises characteristics of exporters/importers are checked and when necessary they are modified.

No imputation made by Eurostat

Adjustments of the ITGS data are made due to missing trade: either due to not-reported trade (non-responding reporting units in intra-EU trade or missing/incomplete customs declaration) or not-collected trade (trade below Intrastat exemption threshold).

VAT data and/or historical data of an exporter/importer are used to estimate the value of missing trade. The distribution by the product and partner country is made by historical data of a given exporter/importer or by the data of similar exporters/importers.

Slovak TEC data disseminated on Eurostat website  include adjustments for missing trade (trade below threshold and non-response in intra-EU trade).

Not applicable.

All reference documents and relevant information on TEC data can be found on the ‘Focus on enterprise characteristics (TEC)’ page of the ‘International trade in goods’ section on Eurostat website.