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National reference metadata

Spain

Reference metadata describe statistical concepts and methodologies used for the collection and generation of data. They provide information on data quality and, since they are strongly content-oriented, assist users in interpreting the data. Reference metadata, unlike structural metadata, can be decoupled from the data.

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Structural business statistics (sbs)

National Reference Metadata in SBS Euro-SDMX Metadata Structure (ESMS) - from reference year 2021 onwards (ESSBS21)

Compiling agency: For Industry, Trade and Non-financial Services: National Statistics Institute (INE). For Construction: Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility. For Financial and Insurance activities:   Bank of Spain.  Ministry of Economy. National Statistics Institute (INE).

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Structural business statistics (SBS) describes the structure, conduct and performance of economic activities, down to the most detailed activity level (several hundred economic sectors). SBS covers all activities of the business economy with the exception of agricultural activities, public administration and (largely) non-market services such as education and health. Main characteristics (variables) of the SBS data category:

• Business demographic variables (e.g. Number of active enterprises)

• "Output related" variables (e.g. Net turnover, Value added)

• "Input related" variables: labour input (e.g. Number of employees and self-employed persons, Hours worked by employees); goods and services input (e.g. Purchases of goods and services); capital input (e.g. Gross investments)

Business services statistics (BS) collection contains harmonised statistics on business services. From 2008 onwards BS become part of the regular mandatory annual data collection of SBS. The BS’s data requirement includes variable “Turnover” broken down by products and by type of residence of client. 

The annual regional statistics collection includes three characteristics due by NUTS-2 country region and detailed on NACE Rev 2 division level (2-digits).

27 August 2024

SBS constitutes an important and integrated part of the new European Business Statistics Regulation N° 2152/2019

Data requirements, simplifications and technical definitions are defined in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197

Enterprise – for country-level business statistics

The statistical unit for national data of SBS is the Enterprise as defined in line with the Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 on the statistical units for the observation and analysis of the production system in the Community.

"The enterprise is the smallest combination of legal units that is an organisational unit producing goods or services, which benefits from a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making, especially for the allocation of its current resources. An enterprise carries out one or more activities at one or more locations. An enterprise may be a sole legal unit."

Until the 2017 reference year, Spain identified, for operational purposes of SBS, the statistical unit Enterprise with the Legal Unit. Thus, each Legal Unit formed an Enterprise.
In accordance with the European Statistical System, from the SBS exercise 2018 onwards, the statistical unit 'enterprise' can be formed by one or several legal units. For enterprises consisting of more than one legal unit, new compilation methods, based on guidelines and recommendations of Eurostat, have been applied in order to measure the economic characteristics of the Enterprise, considering the set of their legal units and eliminating intra-enterprise transactions.

Local unit – for regional business statistics.

The local unit is an enterprise or part thereof (e.g. a workshop, factory, warehouse, office, mine or depot) situated in a geographically identified place. At or from this place economic activity is carried out for which - save for certain exceptions - one or more persons work (even if only part-time).

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The observation or reporting unit is the Legal Unit. Basic information on the Legal Units comes either from direct collection (by completing questionnaires) or, increasingly, from the use of administrative sources (tax data for economic variables, and data from the Social Security for variables related to employment).

The target population comprises all active producer market enterprises of sections B to N, P to R and divisions S95, S96 of NACE Rev2 according to the national statistical Business Register (SBR). 

Coverage: No threshold is applied regarding the size of enterprises.

All the enterprises resident in the entire national territory of Spain are considered.
Foreign affiliates resident in Spain are included.
Spanish affiliates resident abroad are excluded.

2022

The reference period for the data is generally the calendar year. Exceptionally, companies that operate seasonally or during campaigns that cover two different years and have their data recorded this way, provide the information of the season or campaign that finishes that year.

For non-financial activities, the SBS of Spain is obtained from sampling processes. The samples are delineated to ensure that they are representative of the target population, detailed by activities and size of the enterprises. To obtain the information for each sampling unit, a combination of direct collection on the respondents and administrative data is used.

The sampling design tries to minimize sampling errors and the processes of the statistical operation are intended to eliminate or minimize the errors in all stages (data collection, detection and correction of errors at microdata level, imputation processes, macro editing stages etc.)

The techniques used in data collection, coverage control, detection and correction of errors and the imputation of missing information allow obtaining highly reliable statistics.

• Number of enterprises and number of local units are expressed in units.

• Monetary data are expressed in millions of €.

• Employment variables are expressed in units.

• Per head values are expressed in thousands of € per head. 

Ratios are expressed in percentages.

Use of statistical surveys and administrative sources

  • Industry, Trade and Non-financial Services: For a subset of the sample of Industry, Trade and Non Financial Services Sector (subset that is progressively increased each year) characteristics listed in 18.1 are estimated using administrative sources. The other characteristics, not available in administrative sources, are estimated using model-based estimation. A ratio imputation is used, based on information from previous reference period, and previous and new administrative data for this subset of the sample. Then, this subset of the sample is integrated with those obtained though the statistical surveys.
  • Construction: For a small subset of the Construction Sector sample, characteristics are estimated using administrative sources and, if unavailable in administrative sources, they are estimated using a ratio imputation
  • Financial: Survey on mandatory information

Description of imputation methods used for dealing with unit non-response:

  • Industry, Trade and Non-financial Services: Since reference year 2016 all the non-response is subject to automatic imputation (based on administrative sources and/or information from previous year and/or other kind of imputations as average per stratum, nearest neighbour...) which allows it to be borne in mind as an effective sample. Given that the availability of administrative data (fiscal and employment) is very complete, the effect of non-response by respondents in the direct collection sample has very little impact on the final estimates.
  • Construction: Corrector factor in the weighting procedure.

Inference (grossing-up and calibration)

  • Industry, Trade and Non-financial Services: We have applied non-biased estimators in stratified sampling with correction of the population for grossing-up the figures covered by the SBS Regulation. For the final estimates, and with the aim of harmonizing the SBS and Business Demography figures, calibration using CALMAR has been applied since the 2021 reference year.
  • Construction: Corrector factor in the weighting procedure.

The production of SBS in Spain is carried out, in addition to the INE, by other public institutions/organisms that act as ONAs (Other National Authorities) for certain economic activities (sections F and K of NACE Rev2). The specific activities that are the responsibility of each data producer unit are detailed below (in terms of NACE Rev2):

          • INE: All activities of Industry, Commerce and non-financial Services. Since 2021 it also includes activities K642, K643, K661, K6621 and K6629.
          • Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility: All activities of section F.
          • Bank of Spain: Activities K641 and K649.
          • Ministry of Economy (General Directorate of insurance and pension funds): Activities K65, K6622 and K663.

The INE acts as coordinator of the complete set of activities for SBS and FATS domains. The ONAs prepare the statistics for the activities of their respective scope and deliver them to the INE under an application that includes the detection of errors (which the ONA corrects) and the provision of justifications for the warnings detected.
Finally, the INE integrates the data from all activities, summarizes the results, prepares tables required by the European regulation and carries out the official transmission of the data set to Eurostat.

Data source:

  • Industry, Trade and Non-financial Services: From reference year 2012 onwards, SBS for Industry, Services and Trade sectors are compiled by combination of statistical surveys and administrative data. The proportion of sample units obtained from administrative sources has been increasing progressively. For the 2022 reference year, more than 52% of the sample units of industry, commerce and services are obtained from administrative sources, thus avoiding the statistical burden of said units.

The basic information is obtained from each Legal Unit and comes from two sources:
- The questionnaires sent to the Legal Units of the selected sample.
- The administrative information, of tax origin for the economic variables and of Social Security for the employment variables, available for all the Legal Units of each of the Statistical Enterprise in the sample.

  • Construction: Statistical survey combined with administrative sources.
  • Financial: Combination of statistical surveys, administrative data and mandatory information.  BdE: Information collected from different sources: data collected by the Bank of Spain due to its supervisory or statistical functions, but also information obtained from other supervisors (for some of the entities under NACE6499).

Sample design:  Stratified (by Activity, Employment size class, Region).  Legal units with 50 or more persons employed are investigated exhaustively.

Threshold values: No thresholds are applied.

Administrative sources: For SBS the following administrative sources are used:

  • Tax data: Corporation Tax, VAT Tax, Income Tax
  • Social Security
  • Business Register

These administrative data are subject to several revisions with (increasing) degree of completeness.
The frequency to which these used administrative data are updated is annual. For the purposes of SBS we assess this frequency as very good.

 

 Characteristics directly available or with a proxy in the administrative source:

   -  Number of employees
   -  Turnover
   -  Production Value
   -  Gross margin on goods for resale
   -  Value Added at Factor Cost
   -  Gross Operating Surplus
   -  Purchases of goods and services purchased for resale in the same condition as received
   -  Wages and Salaries
   -  Social Security Costs
   -  Change in stocks of goods and services for resale
   -  Change in stocks of finished products and work in progress
   -  Gross investment in land
   -  Gross investment in existing buildings and structures
   -  Gross investment in construction and alteration of buildings
   -  Gross investment in machinery and equipment

 
Kind of administrative data accessed: Micro data

Relation between reporting units and the legal units / enterprise (statistical unit):

  • Reporting unit = legal unit 
  • Statistical unit = enterprise (the enterprise can be formed by one or several legal units)

Frame

  • The variable used for identifying principal and secondary activities is Value added. When value added is not available, turnover or Personnel is used.  
  • The method used for identifying activities is the Top-down method.
  • Frequency of updating the unit's principal activity (stability rules): Yearly 
  • Frequency of updating the business register in our NSI: Yearly

Annual.

For each reference year t:

  • Direct collection through survey: from April to September t+1.
  • Administrative data: Social Security files are received in March t+1, and files from tax sources in September t+1.
  • Preliminary data in terms of enterprises are sent to Eurostat in October t+1.
  • The national dissemination of the Construction Sector was carried out, in terms of legal units, in December 2023.
  • The microdata in terms of legal units were delivered to National Accounts before April 2024
  • The national dissemination of final data in terms of enterprises for 2022 for Industry, Commerce and non-financial Services Sectors was carried out in March 2024.
  • Final data for all sectors are sent to Eurostat in June t+1.

The availability of a methodology, a common collecting design and process, filtering, edition and elevation in its entire geographical scope, guarantees comparability of results among the different Autonomous Communities. Moreover, the methodological adjustment to the SBS regulation allows comparability with the rest of European Union countries which disseminate the same information for their respective scope.

Length of comparable time series

  • Industry, Trade and Non-financial Services: 1998-2008; 2008-2017, 2018-2020; 2021-2022
  • Construction: 2001-2007, 2008-2017, 2018-2021; 2022
  • Financial activities:  Bank of Spain  1998-2008; 2008-2017, 2018-2022;

Reasons or differences in concepts and methods of measurements for break in time series

2008: Change in NACE classification (from NACE Rev. 1.1 to NACE Rev. 2); 2008 is the double reporting year. 

2018: Full implementation of the statistical unit Enterprise.

2021:  Structural Business Statistics (SBS) and Business Demography (BD) have harmonized their processes related to the status for 'active' enterprises, so that from this reference year 2021 the number of active enterprises for SBS and BD is equivalent for these domains. This has caused a break in the series of "Number of active enterprises". The effect of on variables other than the number of enterprises is mainly quite marginal.

2022: Structural Business Statistics (SBS) and Business Demography (BD) have harmonized their processes related to the status for 'active' enterprises in construction, so that from this reference year 2022 the number of active enterprises for SBS and BD is equivalent for these domains. This has caused a break in the series of "Number of active enterprises". The effect of on variables other than the number of enterprises is quite marginal.