FPS Economy, SMEs, self-employed and Energy , Direction générale Statistique - Statistics Belgium

Direction Thématique Economie ( DTE )

North Gate Boulevard du Roi Albert II 16, 1000
Bruxelles

Retail trade turnover, value and price indices.

Prices are derived from CPI and used to calculate volume of sales

Nace Rev.2 classification (Statistical Classification of Economic Activities)

 Division G47 in NACE Rev. 2

The main data source is the VAT declaration of enterprises to the FPS Finances and +/- 340 major enterprises are surveyed.

Turnover including VAT is the only variable asked in the survey.

Administrative data of VAT register are used for the estimations.

Planned changes in information collected : none

The reporting unit is the enterprise.

All enterprises with NACE division G47 with a turnover threshold per NACE category

All regions are covered.

Time series cover the period from 1998

2015

index

Month

The Law of 12 October 2015 (Arrêté royal du 12 octobre 2015/Koninklijk besluit van 12 oktober 2015) . 

The legal basis for this indicator is the European Business Statistics (EBS) 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) Belgium applies for this indicator the transitional arrangements set in the Annex VII (3.a) of the General Implementing Act EBS, which means that the requirements of the STS R - Council Regulation No 1165/98 and its amendments (The EU Council Regulation 1165/98 concerning short-term statistics, amended by the Regulation 1158/2005, and Regulation 1893/2006 establishing the statistical classification of economic activities Nace Rev.2) will continue to apply until the reference period Q4 2023.

Moreover Belgium obtained a derogation from the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 for 3 years (January 2021 to December 2023) to submit net turnover and volume of sales on a monthly basis for the following breakdowns: NACE Section G, Divisions and Groups of NACE Divisions G45 and G46. For NACE Divisions G45 and G46 quarterly net turnover (value) data for the first quarter 2021 to fourth quarter 2023 will continue to be sent according to the requirements of Regulation no. 1165/1998 during the derogation period.

The reporting units are obliged to provide the data. Fines can be given in cases of non-response or deliberate reporting of wrong information.

No planned changes in legal basis, obligation to respond and frame used.

Data are sent to Eurostat

The Law of 4 July 1962 (Loi du 4 juillet relative à la statistique publique, modifiée par la loi du 1 er août 1985 et par la loi du 21 décembre 1994 portant des dispositions sociales et divers/Wet van 4 juli 1962 detreffende de openbare statistiek, gewijzigd bij de wet van 1 augustus 1985 en bij de wet van 21 december 1994, houdende sociale en diverse bepalingen)

no problem of confidentiality 

Release dates are fixed in advance for a calendar year.

 Direct link: https://statbel.fgov.be/en/calendar

To access from the main page www.statbel.fgov.be: choose your language, click on the link 'release calendar' on the top right of the page.

 Indices are released 30 after the end of reference period.

There's no identification of internal government access to data before release.

The transmission to Eurostat is made using the SDMX format.

monthly

There are news on this indicator available on Dutch, French, English and German versions. In these news the index of deflated turnover (total) is compared to the same month of year before.

The latest version of these news is available on https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/indicators/turnover/retail-trade-turnover

There are no other publications

The news are a web document and are accompagnied by an excel table containing :

• gross indexes
• working day adjusted indexes
• trends
• seasonnaly adjusted indexes

The figures are also available in cube format : https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/indicators/turnover/retail-trade-turnover#figures

Microdata are not disseminated.

Indices are transmitted to Eurostat to be used in calculating European aggregates and to be released as national data.

Methodological information is available on site : https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/indicators/turnover/retail-trade-turnover#documents

There is no available quality document

For each step of the production chain, the data are controlled. Once the figures produced, they are validated by our internal validation service before publication.

checks carried out along the production chain of the indices and these are finally validated by our validation service before diffusion. Eurostat’s requirements are fulfilled and the quality is good

Belgian national bank, Eurostat, Federations, Professional associations, Universities, Regional public services, Other users

no measure of satisfaction but sometimes feedback of users

all of the required series are available

Not available.

There are no actions to speed up or increase the rate of response; we use an administrative source.

The index is released within 1 month after the reference period (European Sample). The definitive index is released at  1 month and 25 days after the reference period.

Questionnaires are sent to the +/-340 reporting unit at the end of the reference month asking for a reply within two weeks

Generally, there is no problem of punctuality with these indices.

The definitions are equally applied to the 3 regions of Belgium.

no problem of over time comparability

No regular confrontation is made, but comparisons are made on an ad-hoc basis, especially when results seem contrary to expectations.

no problem of internal coherence

 Estimated burden on respondents

0.25 h * 314 (respondents) *12 *41€( hourly rate) =38622€

Cost associated with the collection and production of the turnover index :

~3 persons for ~600 hours/year

We try to avoid major revisions by using a "Nace Alert"-system. This system informs us on a monthly basis of possible changes in the Nace-codes of the legal entities in our business register and allows us to better monitor them.
Currently a revision calender does not exist.
If a revision is necessary, it will be applied to all data, both data published nationally and data transmitted to Eurostat

At the beginning of 2021 a major revision of all series since 2010 has been carried out to apply the new guidelines of Eurostat (FRIBS).

A warning has been published on our web site with explanations about this revisions (https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/indicators/turnover/retail-trade-turnover) .
We don't have numeric information on the size of this revision as we haven't been able to calculate MAR and MR yet.

The data source is the VAT declaration of enterprises to the FPS Finances supplemented by a monthly survey of +/- 340 major enterprises.

Data are collected monthly 

 Collection of VAT declaration from FPS Finances.

Two types of questionnaires are used for the survey part. The criteria for determining which part of the target population receives which questionnaire is the Law of 12 October 2015.

The data of these questionnaires are collected by a web application. The management of the questionnaires is carried out in our operating system : when a questionnaire is validated by the responding unit, it is granted a temporary status. An agent in our collect center must then validate the questionnaire before having a status ok. The validation is made based on the past values.

Checks are carried out at the time of data collection and throughout the production chain indices. These are also validated by another service before distribution.

Collected data are daily transferred from the operating system in a datawarehouse. An error reporting with several information (included months for the different survey, included estimations, ...) is sent to all users everyday.

Then, a sas program allows to check the variation of the different variables for a statistical unit and allows to identify problems. If a problem is detected, the collect center is contacted.

If a problem is detected, the collect center is contacted. In function of the respons and the remaining time before the publication, the declaration is corrected or estimated for the calculation.

Final tables are validated by our validation service : format, content, missing informations, layout of press release,...are verified.

If results appear abnormal, the validation service recontacts the responsible for verification.

 Estimates for non-response : For exhaustive units, time series methods are used.

Estimates for grossing-up to population levels :calibration methodology is used

Type of index : The turnover index is a simple value index.

Method of weighting and chaining : Weights are calculated with calibration methods.

Planned changes in production methods : none

Seasonal and calendar adjustments

All series are adjusted using JDemetra+ 2.2.2

Not available.