[BE1] Statistics Belgium

Economic Statistics

North Gate - Boulevard du Roi Albert II, 16, 1000 Bruxelles

Bureau 4B15

31 January 2025

31 January 2025

31 January 2025

See concept 3.1 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

This chapter sets out the way in which the PPP programme is implemented in Belgium and explains the material and human resources needed for this purpose. It then notes the constraints relating to access to data, as well as to the confidentiality and dissemination of data in Belgium.

1) Organisation and resources

This section explains the distribution of the PPP tasks between the various stakeholders in Belgium, the way in which the work is organised within Statbel as well as the resources used.

1.1)  Organisation of the PPP exercise in Belgium

All the work in Belgium relating to the calculation of purchasing power parities is carried out by Statbel (Directorate General Statistics – Statistics Belgium), the Belgian statistical office, belonging to the Federal Public Service Economy, SMEs, Self-employed and Energy (FPS Economy). Statbel is responsible for all tasks of the PPP programme and its coordination for Belgium.

As the national accounts[1] are computed by the National Bank of Belgium (NBB), this institution is closely involved in the exercise. It is in charge of the filling and of the validation of the questionnaires directly linked to the national accounts, it means the GDP expenditure weights questionnaire, the Rents questionnaire, the Tips questionnaire and the VAT questionnaire. Then these questionnaires are checked and transmitted to Eurostat by Statbel.

Whether it involves the implementation of the surveys, questions relative to the national accounts, the analysis of the results of a survey or of the PPP, the PPP team of Statbel cooperates closely, whenever necessary, with the contact staff with responsibility for the PPP at the NBB.

As for the Hospital services survey, the specific questionnaire is jointly filled out by experts from the Federal Public Service Health, Food chain safety and Environment (FPS Public Health) and from the National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance (NIHDI).

As for the survey on Compensation of government employees (Salary survey), data for about half of the occupations is provided by the Federal Public Service Policy and Support (BOSA).

Outsourcing

In order to carry out the Equipment Goods and Construction surveys, Statbel employs two subcontractors, each of whom is responsible for the three main phases of a survey: the pre-survey, the data collection and the data validation.

Allocation of tasks

The following table shows how the PPP tasks are allocated between the various stakeholders.

In any cases, Statbel stays responsible for transmitting the data to Eurostat even in the case of tasks entrusted to the NBB or a subcontractor or anybody else.

1.2)  The PPP work inside Statbel

The general organisation of Statbel is as follows.

Each thematic Directorate (in “Traitement” section of the flow chart) has its own Data Collection Department and database (in “Collecte” section of the flow chart) for the collection of data relative to statistics that it has to produce.

The purchasing power parities statistics is part of the thematic Directorate Economic Statistics (Dir. Economic Stats), which is also responsible for other price statistics, whose the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP), as well as for business statistics like Structural Business Statistics and Short Term Statistics, and also Agricultural Statistics.

Its data are collected by the department collecting company data – Company Data Collection (“Collecte entreprises”).

The PPP team is in close contact with the CPI/HICP team wich provides, if needed, a quick answer to any information requests from the PPP team.

The contact with the Company Data Collection department is direct and good, done by telephone and e-mail or via a meeting. It can be formal as well as informal. Even if, as planned by the organisation, the work in charge of the Company Data Collection department is under its responsibility, the PPP team can easily have a look directly at the work done.

1.3)  The Belgian PPP team

What we call the (Belgian) PPP team – in Statbel – includes the staff working on PPP within the Dir. Economic Stats, i.e. the PPP section of Dir. Economic Stats. It means two members work full time for the PPP, the national PPP coordinator included.

Sometimes, for some of the tasks described in the document, it includes also the member(s) of the internal section of the Company Data Collection department with responsibility for the PPP activities, working on a part-time basis for the PPP.

The precision is given only when it is useful for a correct understanding and, often, the wording “PPP team” is used as generic term for speaking of staff working on the PPP working programme.

The external section of the Company Data Collection department with responsibility for the PPP activities is the price collectors. It consists of about twelve persons. They are collectors working full-time for the Consumer Price Index, so they are quite used to the price collection.

From year to year, the number of price collectors decreases like “peau de chagrin”: 12 since 2021 when they were still 19 a few years ago. The goal of the CPI team – which is responsible of this staff – is to use scanner data and/or webscrapping instead of price collectors where possible. Thus, the workload moves from the Company Data Collection department external staff to the CPI in-house team. The PPP team must follow the same evolution but, even if it is at a smaller scale, without the help of extra staff that the CPI team has to compensate the gliding of the workload from the price collectors to the PPP team.

The internal section of the Company Data Collection department consists of an assistant working part-time for the PPP. He is new since January 2018 and works on the pre-survey of the Consumer Goods surveys, on the price collection carried out internally for a part of the CGS item lists and on specific data collection like for the Hotel questionnaire for example.

See concept 3.2 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 3.3 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 3.4 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 3.5 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 3.6 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

The whole country.

See concept 3.8 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

Not applicable, because PPPs (Purchasing power parities) are primarily spatial indicators.

See concept 4 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 5 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 6.1 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 6.2 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

All the data collected in the framework of the purchasing power parities work programme is subject to the rules of statistical confidentiality and professional secrecy.

Article 1b of the law of 4 July 1962 on public statistics stipulates that “Data relative to individual statistical units, (…) obtained directly for statistical purposes or indirectly from administrative or other sources, are protected against all violations of the right to confidentiality. This means that any non-statistical use of data obtained and any illicit disclosure are prohibited.”

Article 18 also stipulates that any individual data collected pursuant to this law, or general and anonymous statistics produced using this data, which have not been made public by the National Institute of Statistics, may not be published or communicated to unauthorised persons or services.

Any infringement of the data disclosure prohibition specified in these two indents is liable to penal sanctions.

Compliance by the subcontractors with the data confidentiality requirements is guaranteed by a confidentiality clause in the contract.

On the European level, the article 21, §1 of the Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 says that “Transmission of confidential data from an ESS authority, as referred to in Article 4, that collected the data to another ESS authority may take place provided that this transmission is necessary for the efficient development, production and dissemination of European statistics or for increasing the quality of European statistics.”

In this framework, the signature by each NIS of a form authorizing Eurostat to transmit the countries data to the other member states for a specific use and in respecting the data confidentiality rules would allow Belgium to give an access right to Belgian PPP individual price observations to the other participating countries.

No data treatment.

Neither Statbel nor the National Bank of Belgium publishes any information on purchasing power parities.

The PPP team plans to publish some results and general PPP information on the Statbel website.

None.

None.

See concept 9 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

Neither Statbel nor the National Bank of Belgium publishes any information on purchasing power parities.

The PPP team plans to publish some results and general PPP information on the Statbel website in 2021 to meet the requirement of the EU grant for the PPP data collection 2021.

See concept 10.4 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

Not applicable

The latest version of the "EUROSTAT-OECD Methodological manual on purchasing power parities" is available online. 

See concept 10.7 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

All data provided undergo a detailed multilateral validation process, described in detail in the PPP Manual (see 10.6).

At European level, the PPP Regulation requires Eurostat to assess the PPP processes of each EU Member State at least once every six years and to publish the results of these assessments on the Eurostat website. The outcome of these assessments are released on Eurostat's website.

See concept 12.1 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 12.2 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

All indicators are calculated and published.

See concept 13.1 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See the concept 13.2 of the 6 different Inventories (Consumer goods Inventory : PPP_CGSES_A, Housing Services Inventory : PPP_RENTSES_A, Compensation of Government Employees Inventory : PPP_SALARES_A, Hospital Services Inventory : PPP_HOSPES_A, Equipment Goods Inventory : PPP_EQIPMES_A and Construction Inventory : PPP_CNSTES_A).

See the concept 13.3 of the 6 different Inventories (Consumer goods Inventory : PPP_CGSES_A, Housing Services Inventory : PPP_RENTSES_A, Compensation of Government Employees Inventory : PPP_SALARES_A, Hospital Services Inventory : PPP_HOSPES_A, Equipment Goods Inventory : PPP_EQIPMES_A and Construction Inventory : PPP_CNSTES_A).

See concept 14.1 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 14.2 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 15.1 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 15.2 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 15.3 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

Not applicable

See 16.1.

The following table provides a summarised estimate of the resources utilised annually on average in the PPP programme in Belgium to carry out the regular work, including all organisations involved.

As until now it is impossible to get the information from the organisations external to Statbel, their work is not included in the estimation.

[1] In fact, the national accounts are produced under the responsibility of the Institute for National Accounts (INA) which consists of representatives from three major institutions: Statbel, the National Bank of Belgium and the Federal Planning Bureau.

[2] The majority of the price collectors have more than 20 years experience in collecting prices for the Consumer Price Index.

See concept 17.1 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

Not applicable, cf. 17.1.

See concept 18.1 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See concept 18.2 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms and the concept 18.2 of the 6 different Inventories (Consumer goods Inventory : PPP_CGSES_A, Housing Services Inventory : PPP_RENTSES_A, Compensation of Government Employees Inventory : PPP_SALARES_A, Hospital Services Inventory : PPP_HOSPES_A, Equipment Goods Inventory : PPP_EQIPMES_A and Construction Inventory : PPP_CNSTES_A).

See concept 18.3 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms and the concept 18.3 of the 6 different Inventories (Consumer goods Inventory : PPP_CGSES_A, Housing Services Inventory : PPP_RENTSES_A, Compensation of Government Employees Inventory : PPP_SALARES_A, Hospital Services Inventory : PPP_HOSPES_A, Equipment Goods Inventory : PPP_EQIPMES_A and Construction Inventory : PPP_CNSTES_A).

See the concept 18.4 of the 6 different Inventories (Consumer goods Inventory : PPP_CGSES_A, Housing Services Inventory : PPP_RENTSES_A, Compensation of Government Employees Inventory : PPP_SALARES_A, Hospital Services Inventory : PPP_HOSPES_A, Equipment Goods Inventory : PPP_EQIPMES_A and Construction Inventory : PPP_CNSTES_A).

See concept 18.5 of the Eurostat metadata file prc_ppp_esms.

See the concept 18.6 of the 6 different Inventories (Consumer goods Inventory : PPP_CGSES_A, Housing Services Inventory : PPP_RENTSES_A, Compensation of Government Employees Inventory : PPP_SALARES_A, Hospital Services Inventory : PPP_HOSPES_A, Equipment Goods Inventory : PPP_EQIPMES_A and Construction Inventory : PPP_CNSTES_A).

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