Hungarian Central Statistical Office (HCSO)

Sectoral Statistics Department

H-1525 Budapest, P.O.B. 51., Hungary

Inland waterway transport statistics provides information on the volume and performance of freight transport on EU inland waterway network. They are reported on the basis of the "territoriality principle" which means that each country reports the loading, unloading and movements of goods that take place on its national territory, irrespective of country of origins of undertakings or place of first loading and final unloading.

The full data provision obligation includes:

• annually: goods transport by type of goods, by nationality of vessels and by type of vessel as well as container transport by type of goods;
• quarterly: goods and container transport by nationality of vessels.

In addition, the legislation foresees voluntary annual data on vessel traffic. Voluntary annual data on the transport of dangerous goods and the number of accidents has been agreed with the reporting countries.

In summary, the statistics transmitted to Eurostat on inland waterway transport:

• Transport of goods (annual and quarterly mandatory data provision);
• Vessel traffic (annual voluntary data provision);
• Transport of dangerous goods (annual voluntary data provision)
• The number of accidents (annual voluntary data provision).

Country and NUTS codes

Territorial units like reporting country and regions for loading/unloading are coded according to NUTS classification for those units covered by NUTS Regulation and to ISO 3166 for the rest (e.g. territorial units outside EU). The used version of NUTS always corresponds to the version in use and no conversion to the previous version is required. For instance, NUTS 2006 is used for 2008 to 2011 data, NUTS 2010 for 2012 to 2014 data, NUTS 2013 for 2015 to 2017 and NUTS 2016 for 2018 until next NUTS Regulation.

The level of detail is either NUTS0 – for reporting country – or NUTS2 (basic regions, 4 digits) – for regions. When using ISO 3166 and 4-digits level coding is required (e.g. for regions outside EU), the two-digit ISO code followed by “ZZ” is used.

Goods classification

Prior to 2007, the types of goods reported as being transported by inland waterways were those defined by NST/R (Standard Goods for Transport Statistics). In 2007 only, the type of goods has been reported according to either to the NST-2000 classification or to the NST/R classification. From 2008 onwards, only the NST2007 classification is valid as set out in Commission Regulation 1304/2007 amending Regulation 1365/2006 with respect to the establishment of NST2007 as the unique classification for transported goods in certain transport modes.

Dangerous goods are classified according to the European Agreement Concerning the International Carriage of Dangerous Goods by Inland Waterways (ADN). The classes are the following:

Class      Denomination

1             Explosive substance and articles
2             Gases
3             Flammable liquids
4.1          Flammable solids, self-reactive substances and solid desensitised explosives
4.2          Substances liable to spontaneous combustion
4.3          Substances that, in contact with water, emit flammable gases
5.1          Oxidising substances
5.2          Organic peroxides
6.1          Toxic substances
6.2          Infectious substances
7             Radioactive material
8             Corrosive substances
9             Miscellaneous dangerous substances and articles

Inland waterway transport (freight and passenger) and statistics on port traffic

The definitions covering the main concepts used in this domain are included in Article 1 and Annex II to Regulation 425/2007. The main definitions are as follows:

Navigable inland waterway: A watercourse, no part of the sea, which by natural or man-made features is suitable for navigation, primarily by inland waterway vessels. This term covers navigable rivers, lakes, canals and estuaries.

Inland waterway vessel: A floating craft designed for the carriage of goods or public transport of passengers, which navigates predominantly in navigable inland waterways or in waters within, or closely adjacent to sheltered waters or areas where port regulations apply.

Nationality of the vessel: The country in which the vessel is registered.

Inland waterways transport: Any movement of goods using inland waterways vessels, which is undertaken wholly or partly in navigable inland waterways.

National inland waterways transport: Inland waterways transport between two ports of a national territory irrespective of the nationality of the vessel.

International inland waterways transport: Inland waterways transport between two ports located in different national territories.

Transit inland waterways transport: Inland waterways transport through a national territory between two ports both located in another national territory or national territories provided that in the total journey within the national territory there is no trans-shipment.

Inland movement: any movement of goods and/or passengers to and from inland ports connected by water routes which may be made navigable by one or more lock structures.

Inland waterways traffic: Any movement of a vessel on a given navigable inland waterway.

Types of vessels:

• Self-propelled barge. Any powered inland waterways freight vessel, other than self-propelled tanker barges.
• Barge not self-propelled. Any unpowered inland waterways freight vessel, other than not self-propelled tanker barges. This category includes towed, pushed and pushed-towed barges.
• Self-propelled tanker barge. A self-propelled barge intended for the transport of liquids or gases in fixed tanks.
• Tanker barge not self-propelled. A barge, not self-propelled intended for the transport of liquids or gases in fixed tanks.
• Other goods carrying vessel. Any other known or unknown kind of inland waterways freight vessel intended for carrying goods not defined in the previous categories.
• Seagoing vessel. A vessel other than those, which navigate predominantly in navigable inland waterways or in waters within, or closely adjacent to, sheltered waters or areas where port regulations apply.

Containers: A freight container means an article of transport equipment:

1. of a permanent nature and accordingly strong enough to be suitable for repeated use;

2. specially designed to facilitate the carriage of goods by one or more modes of transport, without intermediate reloading;

3. fitted with devices permitting its ready handling, particularly its transfer from one mode of transport to another;

4. so designed as to be easy to fill and empty;

5. having a length of 20 feet or more.

The size of containers is reported according to four categories:

1) 20 Foot ISO containers (length of 20 feet and width of 8 feet)

2) 40 Foot ISO containers (length of 40 feet and width of 8 feet)

3) ISO containers over 20 feet and under 40 feet in length

4) ISO containers over 40 feet long

Containers smaller than 20 feet are reported under Category 1.

Containers of unknown size are reported under Category 3.

Inland waterways accidents: specific, identifiable, unexpected, unusual and unintended external event caused by, or in connection with, the operation of an inland waterways vessel resulting in an inland waterways casualty or incident which occurs at a particular time and place, without apparent cause but with marked effect.

By definition suicides are excluded, as they are deliberate acts. Because of their importance, suicide statistics should be collected separately. Terrorists and criminal acts are excluded.

Inland waterways accidents involving the transport of dangerous goods: An inland waterways accident involving a vessel carrying any of the classes of dangerous goods defined by the ADN classification

Inland waterway traffic: any movement of an IWT vessel on a given IWT network. When a vessel is being carried on another vehicle, only the movement of the carrying vehicle (active mode) is taken into account.

Inland waterway journey: any movement of an IW vessel from a specified point of origin to a specified point of destination.

 For more definitions and concepts, please consult the “Reference Manual on Inland Waterways Transport Statistics”, chapter 4.

The statistical units for inland waterways transport are the inland waterways undertakings.

All enterprises/undertakings that carry out inland waterways transport on a national territory over one year, irrespective of their country of origins or place of first loading and final unloading.

the Hungarian section of the Danube

The first data were sent to the EU in 2003 on the year 2001, in accordance with Council Directive 80/1119/EEC, which has since been repealed. EU harmonization was realised completely by 2004, We were able to provide data on transit ship traffic in that year for the first time.

In compliance with Regulation (EC) No 1365/2006 (currently in force), data transmission to the EU became simpler. Accordingly, data on inland waterway freight transport have to be sent only yearly (5 tables) from 2007 onwards, and only aggregated data have to be sent quarterly by the nationality of vessels. From the same year data on container transport are to be sent as well, so OSAP questionnaires No 1198 and 1857 had to be modified for the year 2007.

The implementing Regulation (EC) No 425/2007 of the above Regulation requires data on inland waterway freight transport to be sent by regions instead of countries, so OSAP questionnaire No 1198 had to be modified for 2008 as well: the ports of departure or arrival and of loading or unloading had to be registered again so that the ports can be coded according to the given region codes (in the Pécs Department, Business Services Statistics Data Collection Department, Transport and Tourism Statistical Data Collector Section from 2017). (OSAP questionnaire No 1857 includes data on ports.)

Not applicable

Data is disseminated using the following units of measure:

• 1000T: Thousands of tonnes
• MIO_TKM: Millions of tonnes/km (the transport of one tonne by inland waterways over one kilometre)
• TEU: Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (a unit of volume used in maritime transport statistics equivalent to a 20-foot ISO container )
• 1000 TEU_KM: Thousands of TEUs/Km (the transport of one twenty-foot equivalent unit over one kilometre )
• VES_MOV: Vessel movements (in number)
• >VES_KM: Thousands of vessels/Km (the number of movement of an IWT vessel over one kilometre. The distance taken into account is the distance actually run. Movements of unladed vessels are included. In a convoy, each unit is counted as a vessel)

The reference period is the calendar year 2021.

European:

• Regulation (EU) 2018/974 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2018 on statistics of goods transport by inland waterways (codification)

National:

• Government Decree 273/2019 (20.11.) on The National Statistical Data Collection Programme enacting the surveys of the reference period issued on the basis of the authorization of the Statistical Act (2016 CLV Law about Official Statistics)

Not applicable

European:

• Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

National:

•  Statistical Act  (2016 CLV Law about Official Statistics)
•  
•  

The data collected is not confidential

Inland waterway transport statistics are published quarterly 60 days (about two months) after the reference quarter within the quarterly publication of the Statistical Reflections on transport performances. The data are available also in the Dissemination database of HCSO on a monthly basis. Dissemination dates are publicly available in the dissemination calendar of the HCSO.

http://www.ksh.hu/katalogus/#/kiadvanyok/en

Inland waterways transport statistics are published quarterly 60 days (about two months) after the reference quarter within the quarterly publication of the Statistical Reflections on transport performances. The data are available also in the Dissemination database of HCSO on a monthly basis. All these are free of charge to all users.

Inland waterways transport statistics are published quarterly 60 days (about two months) after the reference quarter within the quarterly publication of the Statistical Reflections on transport performances. The data are available also in the Dissemination database of HCSO on a monthly basis.

Inland waterway transport statistic is published quarterly 60 days (about two months) after the reference quarter within the quarterly publication of the Statistical Reflections on transport performances

Publications of inland waterway transport statistics are done through the website of HCSO

Not applicable

Not applicable

Summary Tables (STADAT)

Standard documentation with Meta information (Definitions, comments, methods, quality) on Inland Waterway Transport Statistics are available at national level on the website of HCSO.

Standard documentation with Meta information (Definitions, comments, methods, quality) on Inland Waterway Transport Statistics are available at national level on the website of HCSO.

The system follows as far as possible the European Statistics Code of practice and Quality Assurance Framework of the European Statistical System, more precisely Principle 4: Commitment to Quality.
There are procedures in place to plan, monitor and improve the quality of the statistical processes. Procedures based on quality reporting are in place to internally monitor product quality. Results are analysed regularly and improving actions are undertaken, if needed (for example after obtaining annual summary results and mirror checks reports from Eurostat).
HCSO has introduced standard quality reports to be produced and kept up-to-date for all statistics. These reports are available at the moment only for the associate of HCSO.

Data quality can be assessed as high. There is a set of validation rules and quality checks put in place, which detect various types of issues. In case of any issues detected, the data providers are contacted to provide explanations or/and revise the data accordingly. Checks for consistency overtimes are prepared and revised as well and the results are compared with the data published by the airports on their website.
Annually, Eurostat provides a data quality report with a summary of the main findings affecting quality as well as showing the solution adopted and the materiality of the existing differences. Mirror checks and checks for consistency overtimes are prepared as well.
Next to the extensive plausibility checks, the main strength include the excellent cooperation with the relevant departments of the airports. Timeliness and punctuality are very good.
If there are any inconsistencies HCSO provides an explanation which is then included in the Country Specific Notes (CSNs) file available as an Annex to Eurostat’s metadata.

The main users of the inland waterway transport statistics are governmental organizations (MND), EUROSTAT, ITF - International Transport Forum, professional organizations, research workers, undergraduates, journalists, etc.

OSAP questionnaires No. 1382: the final user of the data is the Ministry of National Development.

 There was no user survey especially on inland waterway transport statistics data carried out so far but direct feedback from main users indicates a good level of satisfaction regarding data coverage and availability.

Data on inland waterway freight transport - in compliance with the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council 974/2018 on statistical data collection on inland waterway freight transport and Commission Regulation (EC) No 425/2007 on statistics of goods transport by inland waterways in accordance with the Regulation implementing Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council 1365/2006 / EC- include the freight transport performances of Hungarian and foreign vessels on the Hungarian section of inland waterways. 

According to the Directive, data do not contain the freight transport performances in connection with dredging activity on inland waterways. The calculation of freight tonne-kilometre performances is based on the multiplication of the number of goods transported by the distance travelled on the Hungarian section of inland waterways.

The overall accuracy of the inland waterway transport statistics data is good. The processing with several plausibility checks as well as checks done before transmitting data to Eurostat provides high accuracy of the data. 

Not applicable

The response rate of Questionnaire No. 1198 is 100%.

The response rate of Questionnaire No. 1392 is 100%.

Data of Questionnaire No. 1857 are taken from the Ministry of National Development. Since January 2014 data processing is in HCSO. In every quarter of 2021, we had activity information about the designated enterprises, all of them which had loading activity in the reference period sent data.

In the data collection the performance of freight and passenger transport on inland waterways of Questionnaire No. 2160 the data providing of the significant, high-performance enterprises is permanently almost 100%. Mostly those of the smaller enterprises do not send the questionnaires back that had not been performing such activities in the examined period. (This relatively often occurs because of the hectic nature of waterway transport.)

All the statistics required by the provisions of the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council 974/2018 on statistical data collection on inland waterway freight transport are transmitted to Eurostat latest 6 months after the reference month.

There is not any difficulty to respect the deadline of T+6 months.

All the statistics required by the provisions of Regulation 974/2018 are available 1 month before the deadline for the data provisions set up in the legal act.

There are no problems of comparability for inland waterway transport data collection with very high data comparability across countries due to the common legal basis. Comparisons of the data declared by partner reporting airports (so-called mirror checks) by Eurostat allow further the detection of possible inconsistencies which can be corrected if possible.

From 2007, the transposition of EU legislation into Hungarian practice, the statistics on inland waterway transport are comparable over time.

Time series checks are regularly made to detect inconsistencies in the data.

Comparisons with other transport statistics are only partially and to a limited extent possible with regard to freight transport and passenger transport since data are currently not available or are not collected at the same level of detail and also different methods and underlying objectives.

The datasets collected and provided to Eurostat are consistent.

The response burden is put on the data providers, but is reduced to a minimum – the data users can provide the data via e-mail and are only contacted if plausibility errors cannot be solved by the HCSO.

The data revision policy of HCSO can be found on its homepage.

The planned revision in water statistics means that the quarterly data are always preliminary, they are finalized at the end of the year, usually at the end of the first quarter of the year following the reference year, when all corrections, modifications, basic checks, etc. are reviewed, etc. .

Information needed for the datasets  A1, A2, A3, A5, B1, B2, C1, D1 and D2 are collected from the following questionaires:

Data collections:

• 1198 Data collection sheet on the transit vessel traffic on the Hungarian section of the Danube. The data collection is part of the National Programme for Statistical data collection

Non-administrative data sources:

• 1857 Freight and vessel traffic of ports. The data collection is part of the National Programme for Statistical data collection

OSAP questionnaire No 1198: monthly questionnaire.

OSAP questionnaire No 1857: monthly questionnaire.

OSAP questionnaire No 1198:

Specialized transport department receives aggregated quarterly data from the Pécsi Department (Business Services Statistics Data Collection Department, Transport and Tourism Statistical Data Collector Section from 2017) which records, from 2014 receives, primarily checks and codes the questionnaires. Further checking, processing of the data and preparing of tables occurs on the specialized transport department.

Range of data suppliers: full-scale observation (1 data supplier)

Implementation: by mail. The questionnaire is downloadable from the Internet.

OSAP questionnaire No 1857:

Specialized transport department receives aggregated monthly data from the Pécs Department ( Business Services Statistics Data Collection Department, Transport and Tourism Statistical Data Collector Section from 2017), which receives, primarily checks and codes the questionnaires. Further checking, processing of the data and preparing of tables occurs on the specialized transport department.

Range of data suppliers: full-scale observation (designated enterprises)

Implementation: electronic, through ELEKTRA system (attachment)

OSAP questionnaire No 1198:

Data processing, data correction: at the Business Services Statistics Data Collection Department, Transport and Tourism Statistical Data Collector Section with the use of an intelligent data entry system of HCSO

Data checking: in the Services Statistics Department with EXCEL software

Preparation of working tables - since 2014 partly through EAR

OSAP questionnaire No 1857:

Data processing, data checking, data correction: specialized transport department receives aggregated monthly data from the Pécs Department ( Business Services Statistics Data Collection Department, Transport and Tourism Statistical Data Collector Section from 2017), which receives, primarily checks and codes the questionnaires. Further checking, processing of the data and preparing of tables occurs on the specialized transport department.

Data compilation is made as indicated in the Regulation 974/2018.

There is not any particular problem existing in the data compilation and validation process.

Not applicable

There is no comment.