Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia (CSB).

Macroeconomic Statistics Department, Producer price indices section.

Lacplesa Street 1, Riga, LV-1010

Services producer price indices (130201).

Services producer price indices measures the change in prices of services provided for enterprises or institutions during a certain period of time against the base period.

Services producer price indices (SPPI) are used for the estimation of Gross Domestic Product at constant prices, as well as for economic analysis.

NACE Rev. 2.

The survey covers NACE Rev. 2 sections H (49.41, 52.10, 52.24, 53), J (58, 62, 63), M (69.10, 69.20, 70.2, 71, 73) and N (78, 80, 81.2). 

Purposive sampling is made from the general population consisting of enterprises either with the number of employees 4 or more or with net turnover in the base year exceeding 100 thsd euro.

The data types used to calculate SPPI are transaction prices, list prices or hourly charge-out rates. Depending on the sector either prices for services or hourly labour costs are used for the calculation of price indices.  Prices of services include all discounts and recharges received by purchasers. Prices exclude value added tax, whereas include subsidies, if received. Hourly labour costs are presented by gross wage per hour and per employee.

Observation unit - Kind of activity unit (KAU).

Reporting unit - enterprise.

Data for SPPI calculations in 2023 were obtained from the quarterly statistical reports (536 respondents) on prices of services and information on hourly labour costs (1851 respondents) collected and calculated within the framework of the wages and salaries statistics (enterprise surveys + administrative data acquired with the help of CSB calculations based on the State Revenue Service information from the “Report on state social security compulsory payments from employee income, Income Tax and Business Risk State Duty during the reference month” and from “Micro-enterprise Tax Declaration”).

Sectors where SPPI are calculated based on the report 1-PC data as well as on the data of the labour cost survey: Freight rail transport (49.20 of NACE Rev.2), Freight transport by road (49.41), Warehousing and storage (52.10), Cargo handling (52.24), Postal and courier activities (53), Postal activities under universal service obligation (53.10), Other postal and courier activities (53.20), Publishing activities (58), Computer programming, consultancy and related activities (62), Information service activities (63), Legal and accounting activities (69.10), Accounting, bookkeeping and auditing activities; tax consultancy (69.20), Management consultancy activities (70.2), Architectural and engineering activities; technical testing and analysis (71), Advertising and market research (73), Employment activities (78), Security and investigation activities (80), Cleaning activities (81.2).

Entire country.

The published SPPI by sectors according NACE Rev.2 (49.41, 52.10, 52.24, 53, 53.10, 53.20, 58, 69.20, 80 and 81.2) are available from 2006.

The published SPPI by sectors according NACE Rev.2 (62, 63, 69.10, 70.2 and 73) are available from 2009.

The published SPPI by sectors according NACE Rev.2 (71 and 78) are available from 2015.

Till 2024 nationally all data (since 2006) for SPPI were disseminated with base year 2015 (2015=100), from June 2024 all-time series was recalculated (rescaled) to base year 2021 (2021=100).

Reference period: last quarter previous year. Chain-linking is applied.

Reference year (the year when the index equals 100): 2021.

Base and reference periods are the same as for national released data and for data transmitted to Eurostat.

Indices.

Quarter.

The prices collected are obtained as quarterly average prices for certain services. Hourly labour costs are obtained as an average for the quarter.

Statistics Law adopted by Saeima on 4 June 2015, is the legal base of all statistics.

The questionnaire is adopted by the Rules of Cabinet of Minister of the Republic of Latvia No 812 of 20 December 2016.

Rules of Cabinet of Minister of the Republic of Latvia No 741 of 29 November 2022 concerning to Official Statistics Program for the 2023-2025.

The specific legal basis for the Short-term business statistics (STS) indicators is the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics.

Followed by the Commission Implementing Regulation 2020/1197 of 30 July 2020 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.

The former legal basis is the Council Regulation No 1165/98 of 19 May 1998 concerning short-term statistics, amended by the Regulation No 1158/2005 of 6 July 2005 concerning short-term statistics and by the Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 of 20 December 2006 establishing the statistical classification of economic activities NACE Revision 2.

The definitions of short-term statistics variables are laid down in Commission Regulation No 1503/2006 of 28 September 2006 implementing and amending Council Regulation No 1165/98 of 19 May 1998 concerning short-term statistics as regards the definition of variables.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat.

Price data provided by respondents is treated as confidential information and protected by Statistics Law.

The summary on confidentiality in the production of official statistics  is available on the CSB website.

The policy of data protection and dissemination has been described in Quality Policy of the National Statistical System of Latvia.

Statistical dissemination policy defines general principles of statistical data dissemination, availability of CSB`s products and services for data users, communication with data users, cooperation with the media, availability of individual data for scientific and educational purposes.

Statistical data shall be considered confidential if they directly or indirectly allow for identification of the private individuals or State authorities regarding which personal statistical data have been provided. Confidentiality of the primary criteria: 1) the minimum number of cases, 2) the dominance criterion. Data are confidential if there are 3 or less enterprises or one enterprise accounts for more than 80% or two of them more than 90% from the aggregate. Also the data of individual enterprises or establishment are confidential.

Before the publication date and time calculated price index information is confidential.

Advance Release Calendar for Key Indicators and Statistics Database are available on Official statistics portal. Data are published on the date indicated at 13.00.

Release calendar is available on the Official statistics portal.

Statistical information published by the CSB is simultaneously available for all data users on equal terms.

Data are transmitted to Eurostat on the same day that the data are published on the Official statistics portal.

Quarterly.

Not available.

Not applicable.

Information on services producer price indices is available on the Official statistics portal database under theme Economy and section Producer Prices.

Consistent time series are available since 2006.

On the Official statistics portal databases disseminates quarterly and annual time series: the reference period compared with the previous period; the reference period compared with the corresponding period of the previous year and 2021=100.

Microdata are not disseminated and accessible for researchers.

Information on producer price indices for services is available on the EUROSTAT homepage in section: Data/Database/Industry, trade and services/Short-term business statistics (sts)/Services (sts_os)/Service producer prices (SPPI) (sts_os_pp): https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/main/data/database

A short description of the methodology and sources used to compile the Services producer price indices is available on the  Official statistics portal: https://stat.gov.lv/en/metadata/2469-services-producer-price-indices  

Management Systems of the Central Statistical Bureau (CSB) are certified according to requirements of ISO 9001:2015 standard "Quality management systems – Requirements" and Information security management system standard ISO 27001:2013. 

The Quality Policy of CSB consists of the CSB's vision, mission, core values and commitment to meet the requirements, follow good practice and ensure continuous improvement.

The quality policy is designed and implemented in accordance with the CSB strategy (3-year period) and the action plan.

The quality of statistics is assessed according to five quality criteria: relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, coherence and comparability.
The quality indicators are calculated taking into account Eurostat defined methodology for the calculation of the Quality indicators.

https://www.csp.gov.lv/en/quality-assurance-framework

SPPI are meeting all the criteria of consistency, comparability, reliability, punctuality and timeliness. The methodology follows the recommendations of the "Methodological guide for developing producer price indices for services", published by the OECD.

If in calculations, when using corrected, revised or delayed information, significant influence of corrections (more than 0.1 percentage point) on total SPPI within a year (over corresponding quarter of previous year) is detected, the published SPPI for the previous period are corrected. The revised indices are published together with the data on the next reference period, indicating the correction.

One time in quarter relevance, accuracy and reliability, timeliness and punctuality, comparability, coherence are recorded.

Data of services producer price indices for users are available on the Official statistics portal database. The data are updated every quarter.

If a user needs some specific information, he may contact the CSB consultant with the request on information required (level of detail, base period, etc.) and CSB staff will provide a response.

The index for user satisfaction isn't available, but there are regular contact with the main users, in order to meet any specific information may be needed.  There were no relevant complains on the SPPI.

Statistics on services producer price indices are available on a quarterly basis and in accordance with the legal requirements.

The accuracy is tackled at national level, by eliminating inconsistencies and errors. Data collection is based on cut-off sample and the sample is updated annually. At the end of the year CSB together with enterprises to choose the most popular services for the next year of the data collection.

Data is collected by web questionnaires, using the data validation rules. The data also are checked manually by statisticians and all questionable cases are verified.  The published data are final, no first estimation are made (see also 17.1). 

Response rate is reasonable (see 13.3).

For SPPI non–probability sampling is used (cut-off method). Sampling errors and CVs or confidence intervals are not calculated for SPPI.  Cut-off threshold is 4 or more employees or base year turnover more than 100 thsd euro, stable activity and large share of the services.

The list of enterprises engaged in the price monitoring is reviewed every year, excluding from it enterprises working unsteadily and including enterprises holding significant position in the respective industry sector. Certain services for regular price registration are selected by statisticians in cooperation with the experts of sampled enterprises. The list of these services representatives is updated one a year. In 2023 approximately 2387 enterprises were included in the sample of producer prices for services and about 3091 prices are collected quarterly.

The types of non-sampling errors are not relevant:

1) Coverage errors - survey framework contains enterprises whose main activity is included in the activities covered by the index (see point 3.6). It is updated annually.

2) Data collection errors - the response rate is around 98.4%. Telephone contacts or electronic reminders are used to follow up missing responses.

3) Data processing errors - web questionnaires and Integrated Statistical data management system contains a validation and automatic controls, that helps to avoid processing errors.

4) Unit and item non-response (missing data) - in case of non –response missing values are imputed.

The published data are final, no first and later estimation are made.

No serious mistakes have been detected in the published data.

The information on Service producer price indices is published at 13:00 o’clock of local time on the 53rd (54th) working day after the reference quarter.

The information letters about questionnaires for the next year are sent to respondents at the end of the year.

The deadline for replies to questionnaires is the 8th day after the end of each reference quarter. The data collection is closed approximately on the 45th day after the reference quarter.

The data was published according to release calendar and sent to Eurostat at the same date when published on Official statistics portal.

Data published according to schedule.

Services producer prices are collected across the country so that index represents the country as a whole. 

The published SPPI by sectors according NACE Rev.2 (49.41, 52.10, 52.24, 53, 53.10, 53.20, 58, 69.20, 80 and 81.2) are available from 2006.

The published SPPI by sectors according NACE Rev.2 (62, 63, 69.10, 70.2 and 73) are available from 2009.

The published SPPI by sectors according NACE Rev.2 (71 and 78) are available from 2015.

The SPPI weights are derived from the same data sources as the national accounts production accounts. The national accounts use the SPPI to deflate the output of appropriate industries.

No comparison with other data sets are available.

There were no any internal data inconsistencies recognised.

The annual average burden was 1.76 hours per respondents or totally 945 hours for all enterprises in 2023. The CSB total time use for SPPI was 3444 hours per year.

CSB Revision Policy has been elaborated in accordance with the European Union and international recommendations and good practice.

The Revision Policy is the same as for national released data and for data transmitted to Eurostat.

Within the context of price statistics revisions of statistical data concern the published producer price indices may be revised in case an error is found in the calculations, or a respondent has submitted updated information for the previous period, which significantly – by more than 0.1 percentage point affects the total price index for the 12 months (m/(m - 12)). Indication of possible corrections of the published price indices for the previous period, receiving late or updated information is available in the respective index metadata description on the Official statistics portal.

Calculation errors affecting the result to one decimal place are corrected and the following index revisions shall be implemented immediately. The corrected price indices are published together with the data for the next reporting period with an indication to the correction.

The first release is considered final.

If a respondent has submitted updated information for the previous period, which significantly – by more than 0.1 percentage point affects the total price index for the 12 months (m/(m - 12)) then revisions are announced simultaneously with the revised data. MR and MAR are not calculated.

Major changes in methodology are announced on the Official statistics portal at the time the data compiled using the revised methodology are first published.

Direct statistical survey of the target sample from the selected enterprises and services.

The sample is stratified by the activity of the enterprise (NACE Rev. 2 classes). For each services sector the special sample is constructed by way of purposive sampling choosing the active enterprises with a large turnover. Within an enterprise the most representative services with high sales volume are selected for the monitoring of price trends.

The sample is updated annually.

Data are collected quarterly.

Questionnaire No.1-PC (quarterly) “Survey on prices of business services" is used for data collection.

The electronic reporting system is the main data collection tool (95%); e-mail questionnaire (5%) are used in data collection. 

The CSB has the main program used for data entering, processing with automatic control and validation tools - ISDMS (Integrated Statistical data management system). The data are compared with the previous period and the same period with the previous year. This tool does not support the price index compilation and transmission to Eurostat.

Standard MS Office professional software (MS Excel, MS Access) is used for compilation and validation of services producer prices. The data files before transmission to Eurostat are checked manually.

In case of non-response - the imputation methods have been applied.

Individual service indices are combined using Laspeyres type formula and base period weights to obtain higher level indices by NACE Rev. 2 classes, groups or divisions.

Laspeyres indices are calculated starting from the class level (4 digit of the NACE Rev.2) up to groups or divisions. Indices are calculated separately for each services sector.

The application of quality adjustment methods is limited. New representative services and new enterprises are introduced at the beginning of the new reference year. For the replacement of selected services the overlap method is used.

The weights are produced once a year - starting calculations for the first quarter of the reference year. Weights are calculated basing on administrative data and information from the complex report on activity (1-gada) collected and compiled by the Enterprise Structural Innovation Statistics Section. The weights used in SPPI calculations in 2023 correspond to enterprises turnover of specific kinds of activity in 2021. In order to ensure the symmetry of weight and price base periods, the weights have been recalculated into the prices of last quarter 2022.

The services producer price indices are neither seasonally nor working day adjusted. 

Not applicable.