Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO)

Division Economy, Section Prices

Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO)
Section Prices
Espace de l'Europe 10
CH-2010 Neuchâtel

Producer Price Index / Produzentenpreisindex / Indice des prix à la production

The main purposes of the producer and import price index are:

as an indicator of the economic cycle,

as a deflator (National Accounts etc.),

to index contracts.

NACE rev. 2.0

Activities covered: The Producer Price Index covers most of the activities of NACE rev. 2.0, Sections A to E. The following activities are not covered: Divisions 03 to 07, 09, and 39 (for some Divisions not all Groups are covered). The Producer Price Index is being extended since a couple of years step by step to the sector of services.

Size classes covered: All size classes are covered.

List and definition of variables: Actual prices (transaction prices) ex-works are collected. They exclude VAT, excise duties and discounts/rebates. The prices are recorded at the time the order is placed.
The selection of products is done by the reporting units. In particular, the criteria for selecting products includes the level of turnover, market presence of the products during at least two reporting periods, constant quality and sale conditions of the products for a given time.

Planned changes in information collected: None.

Accounting conventions: The time span covered by data corresponds to the reference month. Respondents are asked to provide a price falling within the period from the 1st to the 8th of the month.

Reporting unit: Enterprises, associations and major purchasers (including traders).

Observation unit(s): Enterprise.

The frame for identifying units for the population is the business and enterprise register. For the Producer Price Index the population consists of about 130'000 businesses.

Switzerland

From 1914 (data transmission to Eurostat back to May 1993) with some gaps. Data for the Producer Price Index exists without gaps since January 1963.

December 2020 (for the data delivery to Eurostat, the indices are rebased to the annual base 2021 = 100).

Indices

Month

Federal Law on Statistics of 9 October 1992; Bundesstatistikgesetz (BStatG) vom 9. Oktober 1992; Loi fédérale du 9 octobre 1992 sur la statistique fédérale (LSF)

Ordinance of 30 June 1993 on the Implementation of Statistical Surveys; Verordnung vom 30. Juni 1993 über die Durchführung von statistischen Erhebungen des Bundes; Ordonnance du 30 juin 1993 concernant l'exécution des relevés statistiques fédéraux

Bilateral agreement with the European Union

European Business Statistics (EBS) Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of 27 November 2019, followed by the Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197

Compulsory survey since 1st August 2001. Fines can be given.

Planned changes in legal basis, obligation to respond and frame used: None.

Eurostat, OECD, UN, IMF, Swiss National Bank (SNB), State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO)

The compilation and publication of the data are governed by the Federal Law on Statistics (10/9/92), the Ordinance on the Execution of Statistical Surveys (06/30/93) and the Federal Law on Data Protection (06/19/92). The Federal Law on Data Protection specifies that the Swiss Federal Statistical Office cannot publish, or otherwise make available to any individual or organisation, statistics that would enable the identification of data for any individual person or entity.
The Laws and Ordinance are published in German, French and Italian and copies can be obtained, for a fee, from BBL, CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland,  Internet: https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/.

Confidential data are suppressed. Confidential data corresponds to two different situations: if there are less than 3 respondents or if answers are not representative enough.

An advance release calendar which gives one-quarter-ahead notice of the release dates is disseminated on the Internet on the IMF’s Dissemination Standards Bulletin Board (DSBB) (http://dsbb.imf.org) and on the FSO Website (for the current calendar year) (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home.html).

https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/news/agenda.html

The data are released simultaneously to all interested parties by issuing the press release and the updated Internet Website.

The data are made available for information to the Swiss National Bank and and to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs four working days before their release to the public.

Data are transmitted monthly to Eurostat shortly after national publication.

Monthly

The data are published in a monthly press release.

The FSO Website (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home.html) publishes apart from the press release, further, more detailed data (monthly indices and annual averages for about 200 commodity groups, a domestic and export subindex, indices for the main industrial groupings MIGs, and for the core inflation). For all results no regional breakdown is made.

Not available.

Not available.

Current data are sent monthly to Eurostat 

A methodological manual (Producer and import price index, December 2020 = 100, Fundamental principles, Neuchâtel 2021) is available on the FSO Website (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/prices/producer-prices-import-prices.html).

Not available.

The FSO follows the Code of Practice.

Relevance, timeliness and punctuality, comparability and coherence keep largely to the international guidelines. For accuracy and reliability see point 13.

The needs of the main users (Swiss National Bank, public administration, research institutes, trade associations and enterprises, Eurostat and OECD) are mostly fullfilled.

Not available.

See point 3.3

As the Producer Price Index is based on target sampling and not random sampling this question cannot be answered.

See point 13.1

Response rate: The response rate at the time when the survey is closed is usually arout 95%.

Actions to speed up or increase the rate of response: Missing responses are followed up by postal and e-mail reminders and telephone contacts.

Publication date is usually not later than 16 days after the end of the reference month (M+1). The publication schedule is fixed for a calendar year and the data are final when first released and are not subject to revision.

Questionnaires are sent out around the 25th of the previous month (M-1). The delay for replies after reception represents about 15 days and data collection closes towards the end of the reference month (M).

Almost always delivered in time.

The same statistical concepts are applied in the entire national territory and no regional breakdown is done.

The only major break happened in 1993 (completely new methodology, nomenclature and extent). Minor breaks occur at every revision of the index (1939, 1963, 1993, 2003, 2010, 2015, 2020).

Comparisons with industrial output price indices of other countries for a given branch of industry.
Comparison with the total or with specific product groups of the National Consumer Price Index.

Price statistics are integrated in the system of National Accounts. Furthermore price indices are used to deflate values of production and turnover.

All statistical outputs within the data set in question are consistent. There is no annual price update, no chain-linking and no seasonal adjustment.

The data collection and publication of the Producer and Import Price Index occupies six persons to fulfill all requirements (national and international). The burden on respondents is hardly to estimate.

Data are final when first released and are not subject to revision.

The same revision policy is applied to STS data released nationally and transmitted to Eurostat.

Major methodological changes and revisions are announced in advance through a press release.

Data are final when first released and are not subject to revision.

Type of source: Apart from a statistical survey, a small amount of data is gathered from other sources.

Frame on which the source is based: Register of Enterprises and Establishments (REE)

Sample or census: Collection of data is carried out through a sample.

Criteria for stratification: The stratification is mainly based on relative significance (turnover) and representativeness of the enterprises. But also medium-sized and smaller enterprises should be included in the survey each time. In this case, it is assumed that their prices represent the trend among other medium-sized and small enterprises.

Threshold values and percentages: Approximately 10,700 price quotations of producer prices from 2,100 reporting units are collected.

Frequency of updating the sample: The sample is updated regularly.

Data are collected monthly, bimonthly, quarterly or half-yearly depending on the short-time pattern of price fluctuations of the different product groups. The indices are compiled monthly.

Questionnaires used in the survey: On the one hand a standard postal questionnaire (containing previous month's data) is used pre-printed with a list of products for which prices are to be given, on the other hand respondents have the opportunity to answer online by means of an eSurvey.

Planned changes in national questionnaires: None.

Data collection media: Postal or online survey, rarely email.

Planned changes in data collection methodology: None.

Checking of responses and a first set of plausibility tests (where reporting units are asked to provide reasons for large variations [usually more than 15%]) are followed by a second set of plausibility tests (incl. analyzing item indices to ensure that changes are consistent with information about market conditions).

Estimates for non-response: Non-response is negligible. If no price can be obtained in most cases the last known price is carried forward. For significant products an estimation is made by using the price development of similar products or of the aggregate of the commodity group.

Estimates for grossing-up to population levels: There is no grossing-up.

Type of index: Direct Young price index. Small quality changes are not taken into account, while prices are adjusted for substantial quality change, wherever quality difference can be quantified; otherwise products are considered as totally new and linked into the index. When a product becomes unavailable it is replaced by another with similar quality characteristics and sale conditions if possible. New products are regularly selected by the reporting units and linked into the index.

Method of weighting and chaining: For the Producer Price Index the sources of weights are the gross production value or, if not available, the turnover as well as the foreign trade statistics. The reference period for the current index weights is 2017/18.

Planned changes in production methods: None.

No working day or seasonal adjustment is made. Prices quoted in currencies other than the national one are converted into the national currency using the exchange rate at the first working day of the reference month.

There are no differences in the practices used for compiling national indices and those used for compiling the indices transmitted to Eurostat.

None