Statec - Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques

Unit ENT4 "Short-term Business, Transport and Tourism  Statistics"

BP 304 L-2013 Luxembourg

The building permits indicators are quarterly short-term indicators used for the business cycle analysis.

The two indicators that are compiled are

- building permits: number of dwellings

- building permits: square metres of useful floor area or alternative size measure.

Raw data is provided by the local authorities (communes) that are delivering the building permits.

The coverage of these indicators is limited solely by the CC.

The STS-Regulations require coverage of Groups 111 and 112 for building permits in terms of the number of dwellings, and coverage of Section 1 for building permits in terms of a size measure.

NACE Rev2 section F

Building permits as defined in Regulation CE 1503/2006

communes (local authorities)

116 communes

communes of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg

quarterly figures from 2000 on

not applicable

The units of measure are numbers and square meters.

Quarter

European Business Statistics Regulation:

• Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics (EBS-Regulation)
• Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistic (General Implementing Act)

National context :

Statec is the National Institute of statistics and economic studies of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Statec's administration is placed under the authority of the Ministry of the Economy and Foreign Trade. It is professionally and scientifically independent, i.e. it sets its own work programme in accordance with national and European statistical legislation, produces and disseminates data in complete neutrality.

The Law of July 10, 2011 on the organisation of the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies sets out the missions of Statec and its internal organisation. These missions are to provide a public information service of high quality to public and private decision-makers as well as to citizens. Statec is committed to produce statistics, analyses and studies giving a detailed, reliable and objective image of the society of Luxembourg.

Statec coordinates the statistical system of Luxembourg, organised according to the principle of statistical centralisation. For this purpose it widely relies on collaboration with other producers of data as well as with public and private research centres. Statec so centralises data available from public authorities to carry out its studies, but also to make them available to its users on a single platform. With the new law of July 10, 2011, applied scientific research is added to Statec’s missions.

There is no general datasharing. Nevertheless, non-confidential results are shared on demand.

STATEC guarantees the non-disclosure of confidential information when the statistical results are disseminated.

The ESS confidentiality rules are applied. Considering the size of the country and the local delimitations such as communes or villages, results are only published by district, canton and country in order to guarantee confidentiality.

There is no official national release calendar.

There is no official national release calendar.

The release days are the days data are transmitted to Eurostat. According to the principle of independence, data is released to all users at the same time.

As it is foreseen in the STS-Regulation, Statec disseminates quarterly building permits statistics before the end of the delays which are 3 months for this indicator.

There is no news release.

Quarterly publication "Indicateurs rapides G" available on internet and in paper format after +/- 3.5 months

There is no online database, but historical figures are available on request.

There is no microdata access

Results are transmitted to the European Commission in the foreseen harmonized format.

There are no national methodological documents available except STS variable definitions. Statec uses the methodology published in the STS manual.

There is no document on quality management available.

As for other indicators, there is no specific quality management concerning this indicator. Nevertheless, Statec produces these statistics according to the harmonized EU definitions and according to the ESS code of practice.

see 12.1 . Considering the official EU harmonised methods used, Statec aims to produce high quality statistics in terms of relevance, accuracy, timeliness, comparability and coherence. Incoming raw data on buliding permits is accurate and complete.

There is no further information on the relevance of this indicator for users. Results are transmitted to Eurostat according to the STS Regulation. There is no further information available on the relevance of this indicator for users, Nevertheless, the results are quite often commented by media and professional stakeholders.

not available, see 13.1

Eurostat's requirements in terms of time series are fulfilled.

As raw data is quite complete, accuracy is very good. But it is important to note that due to the small size of Luxembourg, there can be high fluctuations.

not applicable

A very small amount of the data is delayed and arrived to the NSI after the publication of first results. There are data revisions each time additional or corrected raw data arrives.

Statec publishes the building permits results in the delays foreseen by the STS regulation (< 3.5 months)

Due to technical reasons or a lack of human resources, the publication of results can be shortly delayed.

The definitions are the same as in CR 1503/2006 to assure European comparability.

There are no major breaks in aggregated time series.

STS statistics are used for business cycle analysis as well as for the compilation of quarterly national accounts. Due to the different concepts, short-term statistics are not completely coherent with other business statistics as SBS.

Due to their specificity, building permits indicators cannot be compared to other indicators.

Not applicable

The data source is administrative data. Costs for the NSI: +/- 40 hours/month.

In the field of STS, Statec has no official release or revision calendar. Data dissemination depends on the deadlines foreseen in the STS regulation. Revisions are made each time when newer, completed or corrected figures are available. The revised results are used for national releases as well as for the data transmission to the European Commission. Users are only informed about the reasons of non-scheduled revisions if the revisions are considered to be important.
Different versions of historical data are not stored, only the last available version is saved. Nevertheless, LU plans to introduce the storage of the different versions of released data, but this project is depending on the availability of resources.
The base year remains unchanged for five years as stated in the STS regulation. After changing the base year according to the STS regulation, LU publishes results according to the new base year = 100 which is indicated in the publications. STS statistics are confronted with quarterly national accounts and, if necessary, corrected.

If there are any revisions in the building permits figures, then mostly two weeks after the delays. Data revisions are very small beacause the municipalities send normally complete data in time.

In the field of STS, and as said in 17.1., revisions are made each time when newer, completed or corrected figures for the different variables are available. There is no official revision calendar or regular process. The data and level of revisions depend on the data available. It is impossible to quantify the expected average size of revisions, for the same reason, users cannot be informed in advance of major revisions.

Normally, the building permits results are definitive at the moment of their first release. Nevertheless, it is possible that the local authorities send in corrected or completed figures. Statec then takes these new figures into account and corrects the results which are transmitted to Eurostat and which are also nationally published.

Calculations (2018-2022) based on vintage figures transmitted by EUROSTAT to STATEC:

MR : -1.075

MAR : 8.125

For this indicator, the raw data on the permits delivered during the reference period is transmitted by the 102 communes. Most of the communes send their data every month, but the delays are sometimes longer than the ones fixed by Statec. Nevertheless, quarterly results are normally calculated in the delays.

In fact, the data is collected monthly. But due to delays to receive the data, Statec only publishes quarterly results.

Data on building permits is collected by Statec and the municipalities use a data sheet in a predifined structure for the transmission. The data are then integrated in a database for calculation of the results.

Data is checked after integration in the database (completeness, errors, etc.). Plausibility tests are run and the results are restructured by automatized syntaxes.

If one or more communes have not transmitted data in the delays, the results are calculated without imputations. As soon as corrected or additional data are transmitted, Statec revises the results.

There is no adjustment performed on the data.

No further comment