- The producer price indices for services are revised every five years and converted to a new base year. This also involves a recalculation of the results from the beginning of the new base year. In the current publications, the base year 2021 = 100 is used. The indices were converted to this basis with the publication of the 1st quarter 2024 in June. This means that all results from the 1st quarter of 2021 have been recalculated.
- As a rule, the base years are ending in 0 or 5. The year 2021 is an exception to this rule, which results from the entry into force of the European Regulation 2019/2152 on European business statistics and the associated implementing regulation. With the base year 2025, the producer price statistics will return to the usual rhythm of regular revisions.
- The implementation of the new European legal basis involved a considerable expansion of the scope of the producer price indices for services. It was not possible to establish the necessary new surveys for all necessary industries of the service sector. The producer price indices for economic sections of the services sector are therefore partly supplemented with suitable estimates for the price development of individual industries from other price statistics.
What is done in the revision?
- The individual weighting schemes were updated with the market structures of the new base year.
- The indices were converted to the new base year 2021 = 100. All indices from the 1st quarter of 2021 were recalculated taking into account the new weighting schemes.
- The calculation of the new weighting schemes may have resulted in individual sub-indices no longer being calculated or new product groups being included.
- New surveys were set up for additional economic sectors and new sub-indices were integrated into the producer price index for services.
- The publication program for economic branch indices at the level of economic sections and economic divisions was adapted to the publications of the European statistical office Eurostat and thus also to the requirements in accordance with European legislation. In addition to the European publication program producer price indices are available for the 3-digit groups of the economic branch classification and for types of services in the GENESIS publication database.
What does that mean for index users?
- The annual average of the new base year 2021 was set to 100.
- With the changeover, price indices with previous weighting schemes are no longer calculated.
- For the period between the start of the new base period and the rebasing (1st quarter 2021 to 4th quarter 2023), the newly calculated indices, based on the new weighting, will replace the price indices previously calculated on the old basis. These have lost their validity with the rebasing.
- The publication positions dating back to before 2021 were not recalculated for the periods before 2021, but only chain-linked, i.e. formally converted to the new base year.