Seasonally adjusted

National Statistical Institute

'Shotr-term business statistics and Transport statistics'  Department

Lilqna Ralinska

State expert

2, P. Volov Str.; 1038 Sofia, Bulgaria

[email protected]

+359 2 9857 128

The index of turnover is a key indicator for assessing the current state and short-term trends in the development of the section 'Accommodation and food service activities'. The index follows the dynamics in the supply and demand of accommodation and food services, also records the influence of the ongoing economic processes in the country.

The turnover index measures changes in the turnover of enterprises section 'Accommodation and food service activities'. This information is suitable for monitoring of current economic developments and short-term forecasts.

Classification of Economic Activities (for international use NACE.BG-2008)

Section I 'Accommodation and food service activities' under NACE.BG-2008. The indices are calculated by divisions (a two-digit NACE.BG-2008) and sector.

Net turnover consists of all income arising during the reference period in the course of ordinary activities of the statistical unit, and is presented net of all price reductions, discounts and rebates granted by it. The turnover includes net revenues from sales of products, goods and services survey units(excluding VAT and other deductible taxes), and revenue from raw materials sold. Excluded from net turnover are:

— all taxes, duties or levies linked directly to revenue;

— any amounts collected on behalf of any principal, if the statistical unit is acting as an agent in its relationship with said principal;

— all income not arising in the course of ordinary activities of the statistical unit. Usually, these types of income are classified as ‘Other (operating) income’, ‘Financial income’, ‘Extra-ordinary income’ or under a similar heading, depending on the respective set of generally accepted accounting standards used to prepare the financial statements.

A enterprise in section 'Accommodation and food service activities'.

The population of firms in section I 'Accommodation and food service activities' includes about 28 000 units, which are form sampling population of approximately 21 000 enterprises with an annual turnover exceeding over 10 thousand BGN. Of these observed a sample of about 2 000 enterprises, which form approximately 60% of the turnover of the section.

At national level: The indices are calculated and published total for the territory of Bulgaria
At European level: Eurostat calculates and publishes aggregated data for EU Member States (EU27) countries and the euro area (EA19). Eurostat publishes data received from the 27 EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland.

The indices are published as time series from the first quarter of 2000 to the last reported quarter of the current reporting year.

The indices are calculated and published at 2015 as a base year.

Per cent (%)

Month

• REGULATION (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 ; 
• REGULATION (EU) 2020/1197 of 30 July 2020 laying down technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152; 
• REGULATION (EC) №1893/2006 - translation to NACE Rev. 2 and groups of activities of STS;
• REGULATION (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009

The indicators are transmitted to Eurostat every month and published at the national level every quarter.

Regulation (EC) №223/2009 on European statistics (article 20, paragraph 4) of  March 11, 2009, stipulates establishing common principles and guidelines to ensure the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential information as required for scientific and technological development and needs of users. Law on Statistics is stated that the individual data received and collected at the time of statistical surveys shall be statistical confidentiality and shall be used only for statistical purposes. Individual data obtained for the purposes of the statistical surveys, shall not be used as evidence to the bodies of the executive powers and the judicial authorities. Requirements, obligations and measures for data protection, as well as fines that can be imposed, are treated in separate chapters of the Law on Statistics, namely Chapter 6 'Protection of secrecy' and Chapter 9, 'Administrative penalty provisions'.

Individual data, data which could be indirectly identified, as well as aggregations of less than three statistical units and/or when the relative share of one parameter is more than 85% of the total volume of this parameter for all population units. Data which according to the Law on Statistics are confidential not published.

At the national level - according to the terms set out in the Release Calendar presenting the results of the statistical surveys carried out by the National Statistical Institute. The turnover indices are published about 50-55 days after the end of the reference quarter.

The calendar is available on the NSI website: https://www.nsi.bg/en/node/480

Data are published on the NSI website, section Business statistics in accordance with the Law on Statistics and the European Statistics Code of Practice respecting the professional independence and aimed at objectivity, transparency and equal treatment of all consumers.

Quarterly

Not published.

The indices are not presented in publications.

Data on section I 'Accommodation and food service activities' are available to all users of the NSI website under the heading Business statistics - Short-term Business Statistics - Quarterly data - Turnover Indices in Services:

https://www.nsi.bg/en/node/6887

and online sistem INFOSTAT:

https://infostat.nsi.bg/infostat/pages/module.jsf?x_2=217

Micro data are neither distributed nor provided to the users.

Not applicable.

• Methodology Quarterly turnover indices in section I 'Accommodation and food service activities':

https://nsi.bg/en/content/960/turnover-indices-services

• Eurostat Methodology of short-term business statistics. Interpretation and guidelines:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/short-term-business-statistics/methodology

REGULATION (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and REGULATION (EC) No 223/2009. REGULATION (EC) No 223/2009 it provides a framework of referencce for European statistics. To guarantee the quality of results, European statistics shall be developed, produced and disseminated on the basis of uniform standards and of harmonised methods: (a) ‘relevance’, which refers to the degree to which statistics meet current and potential needs of the users; (b) ‘accuracy’, which refers to the closeness of estimates to the unknown true values; (c) ‘timeliness’, which refers to the period between the availability of the information and the event or phenomenon it describes; (d) ‘punctuality’, which refers to the delay between the date of the release of the data and the target date (the date by which the data should have been delivered); (e) ‘accessibility’ and ‘clarity’, which refer to the conditions and modalities by which users can obtain, use and interpret data; (f) ‘comparability’, which refers to the measurement of the impact of differences in applied statistical concepts, measurement tools and procedures where statistics are compared between geographical areas, sectoral domains or over time; (g) ‘coherence’, which refers to the adequacy of the data to be reliably combined in different ways and for various uses.

The legal framework that regulates the production of short-term business statistics indicators states that statistics collected within the EU system must be of satisfactory quality and this quality and administrative burden that comes from what must be comparable across Member States. These criteria have been drawn up to ensure that these requirements are met, and that is reflected in the quality reports of the individual short-term indicators.

The quality of the short-term variables is measured by each Member State according to common criteria. The quality of the variables is measured regularly by comparing them with other statistical information, if it is possible some quality indicators are calculated and in addition these indicators are checked for internal consistency.

• Eurostat;
• Bulgarian state institutions and local authorities;
• Business and NGOs;
• Information and polling;
• Analytical and associate professionals.

User reviews are collected by:

• Direct contact - via phone and email;
• Indirect contact - through regional statistical offices; 
• The customer satisfaction is not measured.

All levels of detail that are required by the Regulations concerning STS is calculated and published.

The total population in section I 'Accommodation and food service activities' includes about 28 000 units, which form a sampling population of approximately 21 000 enterprises with an annual turnover exceeding 10 thousand BGN. Of these monthly observed sample about 2 000 units, which form approximately 60% of the turnover.

The main source of errors is the measurement errors which arise at the data collection stage for variety of reasons, for example respondents misunderstanding what information is required or non-providing precisely the desired information.

Shall be made efforts to avoid these errors by providing assistance to the reporting units, improv the instructions attached to the questionnaire, assist the statisticians in Regional statistical offices. Most of measurement errors are detected and corrected through the logical and arithmetical controls of the Information system 'Business cycle' (Online Information system for data collection, editing and processing of the STS information). The system carries out the statutory and warning controls and in a case there are errors, it displays a warning dialog error in the report. The system does not allow completion of the report until they have corrected these errors by statutory controls.

The specific sampling method is 'Stratified Random Sample' in which the first enterprises stratify by section (2-digit numeric code NACE.BG 2008) and then in each section by turnover. Each section has three stratums: 1-complete, 2, 3-sampling. Coefficient of variation is used as an indicator on precision. It is computed as a percentage. Coefficient of variation for September 2021:

Non-responders companies are valued according to the stratum in which they are faced. In stratum comprehensive assessment is done individually for each company using available information on trends in the establishment and adjusted trends in reported units on the same stratum and section. Sampling strata for each section evaluates non-responders using extrapolation coefficients calculated from data reported by enterprises in stratum corresponding section after elimination of extreme values. In these cases it is assumed that there are no significant differences in the behavior of responders and non-responders enterprises. The response rate for September 2021 is 90% in terms of the number of enterprises and 93% in terms of turnover. Actions to reduce non-sampling errors: sending informative reminders and phone calls to collect data.

NSI provides information on turnover index from 50 to 55 days after the end of reporting quarter.

Turnover indices present ontime, according to the terms in the Release Calendar presenting the results of the statistical surveys carried out by the National Statistical Institute.

The turnover indices are representative for the whole country, they are not representative for the regions of the country. To calculate the indices of turnover NSI applies a methodology in accordance with international standards. In this sense, the comparability of the indicators across countries can be considered as very good.

The quarterly indices are presented as time series from the first quarter of 2000 to the last reported quarter. The data for all quarters back to 2000, were recalculates according to the new Classification (NACE.BG 2008) and published in the NSI website.  For conversion of data rows was applied ‘macro’ method. The indices at the old classification (NACE.BG-2003) are recalculated according to the new classification  (NACE.BG 2008) using transition coefficients, which are calculated from transition matrixes, based on micro data.

Regulation (EU)  2020/1197 requires 'Every five years, Member States shall rebase the indices using as base years ending with a 0 or a 5. All indices must be rebased on the new base year within three years after the end of the new base year'. In compliance with these requirements since January 2018 the base year for Short-term business statistics has been changed. All short-term indicators presented in the form of index are calculated and published at 2015 as a base year. The time series has beeen recalculated according to the new base year and are posted on the website of NSI.

The turnover indices are compared with the turnover indices calculated based on data from the annual survey on Structural Business Statistics. The differences are due to different coverage. SBS survey is conducted exhaustively and all enterprises are legally obliged to submit their Annual Reports to the National Statistical Institute. The STS surveys are sampling surveys. Sampling population includes companies with a turnover of over 10 thousand BGN. SBS is the source of turnover for calculation (reconciled) STS indicators.

 Not applicable.

Actions to reduce costs and the burden on respondents: stratified sampling and data submitted online through Information system ’Business cycle’.

The indices of turnover in hotels and restaurants are reconciled on the basis of comprehensive annual data from SBS.

The revised data are published on the NSI site, system INFOSTAT and transmitted to Eurostat.

The QPI MR and MAR are calculated from the year-on-year growth rates for calendar adjusted data for period 2019 - 2021. The indices which used are at base=2015.

MR=1.63

MAR=7.51 

The indices are based on monthly survey ’Sales in industry, construction, trade and services’. The sample includes about 2 000 enterprises which account for about 60% of the turnover of firms in the target population and is representative of all divisions defined in Regulation (EU) 1893/2006. In calculating the turnover index includes all receipts from sales (including revenues from sales of raw materials).

Monthly

Data collection is done online (IS BC), by mail and by phone.

To reduce non-response IS BC has functionality to send an informative and a reminder letters to respondents:

• Automatic formation of electronic letters informing respondents about the upcoming observations, in which they are included. To enable them to attach and reporting forms in PDF format and official letters;
• Provide automatic sending of e-mail reminders to respondents who fail to report the time (when approaching the deadline for submission of reports by the subsystem). Provide automatic sending of e-mail reminders to respondents who fail to report the time (when approaching the deadline for submission of reports by the subsystem).

Validation of data in the report:

When recording the data, the system carries out obligatory and recommended controls according to set with validation rules.

The system carries out the statutory and warning controls. In case there are errors, it displays a warning dialog error in the report. The system does not allow completion of the report until they have corrected these errors by statutory controls.

Validation of the output data:

Output data is verified at section level with regard to the previous quarter, the same quarter of the previous year and also with regard to extreme values, if necessary data is validated at the level of statistical units.

The turnover indices are calculated for both sections: ‘Accommodation’ and ‘Food service activities’. Price effects are eliminated by the use of deflators based on average prices of the base year (2015).

The software used for seasonal and working day adjustment is JDEMETRA 2.2.0 (TRAMO-SEATS). 

First data rows are tested for calendar effects, which usually includes:

• the different number of working days in a specific month;
• the composition of working days;
• the leap year effect, moving holidays such Easter. In working day adjustment the following approach is applied
• RegARIMA approach, with all checks of significance and plausibility of the effects.
• RegARIMA approach, with all pre-tests for number of regressors, length and composition of month, check of plausibility of effects (sign and size of estimated coefficients), etc.
• RegARIMA approach, with pre-tests for Easter and other moving holiday effects.
• The use of national calendar prepared by NSI experts. In seasonal adjustment the following approach is applied:
• The series are checked for outliers of different types, but with the complete automatic procedure for detecting outliers;
• Complete automatic procedure for automatic selection within a large number of models according to the options of the tool, after checking for model adequacy using standard statistical tests (e.g. normality, heteroskedasticity, serial correlation, etc.);
• Fully automatic decomposition scheme selection using information criteria.The decomposition scheme specifies how the various components - trend-cycle, seasonal and calendar component and irregular – combine to form the original series. Usually, the default decomposition scheme is multiplicative, because in most economic time series, the magnitudes of the seasonal component vary proportionally to the level of the series;
• Direct seasonal adjustment is performed. All time series, including aggregates, are seasonally adjusted on an individual basis.

Revisions to seasonally adjusted data are published in accordance with accepted revision policy and release calendar that is aligned with the revision policy and the revision calendar for the unadjusted data.