Statistics Portugal (INE); National Authority (DGAV)

Economic Statistics Department - Agriculture and Environment Unit (INE)

Plant Protection Products Managment and Authorization Unit (DGAV)

INE - Instituto Nacional de Estatística, Av. António José de Almeida - 1000-043 Lisboa;
DGAV - Quinta do Marquês P-2780 - 155 Oeiras

See sub-concepts below.

The data set comprises the annual sales of active substances contained in plant protection products placed on the national market for one calendar year according to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 as amended by Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/269 of 16 February 2017 as regards the list of active substances.

Decree-Law n.º 145/2015 of 31 July

https://data.dre.pt/eli/dec-lei/145/2015/07/31/p/dre/pt/html

National Authority (DGAV)

2015

All variables required under EU regulation are covered by national legislation.

There is no divergence between national definitions and those in the EU regulation.

The data are expressed in kilograms of active substances.

The classification of the active substances in plant protection products is annexed (Annex III) to Commission Regulation (EU) 2017/269 of 16 February 2017 amending Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning statistics on pesticides.

The active substances are classified according to chemical and functional similarity. Aggregation levels in descending order comprise: major groups, categories of products, chemical classes and active substances.

The statistics cover the wholesale and retail trade sector operating in placing plant protection products on the market.

All authorisation holders of plant protection products report the quantity of all active substances that are placed on the market nationally (incl. import and export data).

This data collection comprises pesticide sales data based on the term 'placing on the market' as defined in Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 October 2009 concerning the placing of plant protection products on the market. The scope of the Regulation covers plant protection products and their active substances as can be seen from the key terms of the act immediately below:

Plant protection products: products consisting of or containing active substances, safeners or synergists, and intended for one of the following uses:

• protecting plants or plant products against all harmful organisms or preventing the action of such organisms, unless the main purpose of these products is considered to be for reasons of hygiene rather than for the protection of plants or plant products;
• influencing the life processes of plants, such as substances influencing their growth, other than as a nutrient;
• preserving plant products, in so far as such substances or products are not subject to special Community provisions on preservatives;
• destroying undesired plants or parts of plants, except algae unless the products are applied on soil or water to protect plants;
• checking or preventing undesired growth of plants, except algae.

Active substances: substances or micro-organisms, including viruses, having general or specific action against harmful organisms or on plants, parts of plants or plant products.

Quantity: implies kilograms of the active substances sold.

Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council establishes a common framework for the systematic production of Community statistics on the placing on the market and agricultural use of those pesticides which are plant protection products as defined in Article 2 (a)(i). The statistics shall apply to the annual amounts of pesticides active substances placed on the market in accordance with Annex I and the quantity of active substances shall be aggregated according to the list in Annex III (as amended).

Enterprise placing plant protection products on the market; authorisation holder or holder of parallel trade permits.

All enterprises placing plant protection products on the market; authorisation holders and holders of parallel trade permits.

See sub-concepts below.

The entire territory of the country.

Azores and Madeira

2011 onwards

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because it is not based on an index number of time series.

See sub-concepts below.

Not applicable.

The sales data is collected solely from the authorisation holders of Plant Protection Products with a valid authorisation for the placing on the market or distribution (cases where authorisation has been withdrawn but sales still benefit from a grace period).

Annually.

The individual data of every marketing authorisation holder is aggregated by the National Authority and sent to Statistics Portugal as an aggregate by type of pesticide expressed in active substance.

There is a legal obligation for authorisation holders to provide sales data, in kg of active substances (a.s.) and kg of plant protection products (PPP), under Decree-Law n.º 145/2015 of the 31^st July, to the competent authority (DGAV) by the 1^st April of each year. In January of each reporting year (n), the Competent Authority (DGAV) issues an electronic communication (e-mail) to all authorisation holders and consultants reminding for the need to submit sales data as of the 31^st December of the previous year (n-1). An excel template (attached) for the reporting is also submitted for this purpose. Non-response or incorrect filling of the excel file trigger an additional “reminder” e-mail. If, by the deadline there are still no respondents the legislation in place provides for an infringement procedure.

A comparison with data from the previous reference period is carried out systematically. All values with significant differences or variations are reconfirmed.

Individual data of active substances from companies is aggregated by the National Authority. The sum up of active substances is then performed automatically into chemical classes, categories and major groups. Primary confidentiality is added at this stage. All this variables are then sent to the Statistical Office, how validates the data and implements secundary confidentiality.

Computation of aggregates: Sales data is aggregated by the National Authority according to the list of a.s. and aggregates as provided in the EUROSTAT excel file for reporting sales data (and Annex III of Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009). No additional aggregation is carried out.

Conversion of unit: As a matter of principle this conversion is carried out by the authorisation holder and can be checked by the competent authority. If needed, conversion from L to kg is carried out on the basis of the density and content in a.s. of the product.

Imputation (= process of replacing missing data): Imputation is not carried out. Missing data is not replaced.

Weighting: No adjustment is carried out for non-response situations. If there are significant differences between different reporting years the authorisation holder is contacted as a first step approach to verify if there was an error in the reporting of the data.

Outlier detection: Outliers are validated/not validated with the authorisation holder.

Furthermore, a simple conversion from L to kg is carried out if needed. As active substance content units are expressed as % (w/w) or % (w/v) plus g/kg or g/L.  The conversion is strait forward and normally conducted by the applicants. DGAV conducts casuistic checks for conformity on values based on previous sales data submitted for the same product of products with the same a.s. If units are not presented as requested (kg a.s. and Kg PPP) the applicants are requested to correct the values accordingly.

With respect to data on micro-organisms information on the density of the product and content in cfu is considered for converting in kg a.s.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on time series.

Statistics Portugal adopted the European Statistics Code of Practice in 2005 and follows the Quality Charter available on Statistics Portugal website (https://www.ine.pt/xportal/xmain?xpid=INE&xpgid=ine_qualidade&xlang=en).

DGAV sums up the grouping of data provided by the companies. The strengthen points are the fact that this administrative source is mandatory and exhaustive. The weak ones are the difficult validation due to the fact that DGAV doesn’t have access to microdata, therefore the only validation is based on comparisons of aggregate data with previous years, trying to, wherever possible, identify a technical explanation for large increments or decrements.

The data of pesticide sales is very important to evaluate the market and its connection with the sales authorization by the national authority.

The National Authority (DGAV) has received feedback from some stakeholders regarding the collection of data on the use of plant protection products. This task would imply extremely demanding work on human and material resources and so far is not subject to recall. There is still interest in collecting sales data at regional level but it is difficult to implement as the distribution network is very complex and difficult to track. Known users: Ministry of Agriculture; Ministry of Environment (Environment Report); general public; media (newspapers).

No user satisfaction surveys or other user consultations are conducted by Statistics Portugal or the national Authority.

The data collection covers all active substances of plant protection products placed on the national market and the information of all authorisation holders.

100%

See sub-concepts below.

Data collection on pesticide sales is produced by an administrative source, therefore the requirements concerning variability, variance or some other measure of dispersion does not apply.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on samples, but covers the whole statistical population of authorisation holders and plant protection products placed on the national market.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on samples, but covers the whole statistical population of authorisation holders and plant protection products placed on the national market.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics as the data stem from one source.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable, due to the mandatory administrative data source.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is not based on estimations.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the reported data on plant protection products covers the whole year.

DGAV doesn't have a revision policy.

DGAV doesn't have a revision policy.

Not applicable.

According to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009, the data is published by Eurostat 15 months after the end of the reference year and the national quality report 20 months after the end of the reference year.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics as the data and national quality reports are only published once in a final result.

15 months after the end of the reference period for the data;

20 months after the end of the reference period for the national quality report.

According to the Regulation (EC) No 1185/2009, data must be transmitted until 30 December of the year t+1, and national quality reports until 31 March of the year t+2.

The National Quality Report was delivered with a delay of 13 days, due to several constrains in Integrated farm statistics (IFS) and Pesticide Use Statistics (the dates for the conclusion of the Agricultural Census 2019, the transmission of the pesticide use data and the transmission of the quality report for pesticide sales statistics were concurrent).

See item 7.2.1

Data are collected on a country level (NUTS 0). They are not comparable on a regional level. The geographical comparability between countries is evaluated by Eurostat.

Not applicable, because there are no mirror flows in pesticide sales statistics.

Comparability is assured over time.

4 (four) periods (from the last break in the time series in 2016).

Information not available.

Not applicable for pesticide sales statistics, because the data collection is annual.

Not applicable, because it is not related to national accounts.

Information not available.

No news releasead.

The pesticide sales data are published on:

DGAV web portal, 2015-2018: Pesticide Sales Report (https://www.dgav.pt/medicamentos/conteudo/produtos-fitofarmaceuticos/divulgacao/informacoes-sobre-vendas-de-produtos-fitofarmaceuticos/) (in Portuguese; abstract in English).

See also attached files with the mentioned reports (2015-2018).

Data can be found in XLSX/XLS and CSV formats on the website of Statistics Portugal (databases available in the section “Publication – tables”).

From 2011 until 2013: Agricultural Statistics - 2014 (https://www.ine.pt/xportal/xmain?xpid=INE&xpgid=ine_publicacoes&PUBLICACOESpub_boui=232643985&PUBLICACOESmodo=2) (Dataset 4.2)

From 2014 until 2016: Agricultural Statistics - 2017 (https://www.ine.pt/xportal/xmain?xpid=INE&xpgid=ine_publicacoes&PUBLICACOESpub_boui=336642633&PUBLICACOESmodo=2) (Dataset 4.2)

2017: Agricultural Statistics - 2018 (https://www.ine.pt/xportal/xmain?xpid=INE&xpgid=ine_publicacoes&PUBLICACOESpub_boui=383058708&PUBLICACOEStema=5414331&PUBLICACOESmodo=2) (Dataset 4.2)

Not available for data on pesticide sales.

According to the national statistical system law, article no. 6, individual statistical data on individuals and enterprises shall only be supplied for scientific purposes, in anonymised form to accredited researchers. To know the access conditions and other information, please visit the page https://www.ine.pt/xportal/xmain?xpid=INE&xpgid=ine_serv_clientes&INST=161301979&ine_smenu.boui=161303032&ine_smenu.selected=161303243&xlang=en.

No other dissemination format.

Not available.

Not available.

Not requested.

Not requested.

The National Authority responsible for collecting data on pesticide sales (DGAV – Direcção Geral de Alimentação e Veterinária) does not have information related with costs with the collection of data and on the burden on respondents.

Statistics Portugal and the National Authority (DGAV) followed the Confidentiality Charter (https://www.ine.pt/xportal/xmain?xpid=INE&xpgid=ine_cont_inst&INST=90110304&xlang=en) (only available in Portuguese) for the treatment of confidentiality in pesticides sales statistics. The database does not include individual names of firms or their addresses.

For the disclosure of data of an active substance, the following conditions have to be cumulatively complied (primary confidentiality):

i) the number of contributors must be three or more (threshold confidentiality rule);

ii) the contribution of a single contributor must be under 90% of the total (dominance confidentiality rule);

Also, the disclosure of primary confidential cells through recalculation must be prevented, by application of the secondary confidentiality statistical disclosure control methods.

The data for sales of Plant Protection Products are reported annually by the entities responsible for the marketing to the national authority responsible for the protection of plants, the DGAV - Direção Geral de Alimentação e Veterinária.