Information

In the wake of its efforts to standardizing and approaching the retail trade statistics to the standards of EU statistics, the publication of the Turnover Index Volume of Retail Trade activity has passed through some methodological changes, such as:

• Indices on Retail trade and Sale and Repair of Motor vehicles from first quarter 2024 will be calculated with base year 2021=100.
• Weights are calculated based on Retail trade and Sale and Repair of Motor Vehicles survey in 2023, realized from INSTAT. The turnover is estimated in products level.
• The codification used is CPA (Classification of Products by Activity). The main groups are in accordance with main groups used in Consumer Price Index.

Information on the observation

Purpose – The quarterly statistical Retail Trade data collected by the comitial enterprises show the most recent performance and developments of the economic indicators in the retail trade store units, as well as the consume scale.

The legal base of compilation methodology of Retail Trade indicators is Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on European Business Statistics.

Scope - Based on the main activity in the survey there are included:

• Retail trade activity, group 47-NACE-Rev. 2.2 (excluding the group 47.79-47.99)
• Retail sale of motor fuel, group 473-NACE Rev.2

The groups are evaluated on the base of percentage that each product or goods had covered in the total Turnover. For the codification of products the Nomenclature of the Products was used.

The main groups of are in accordance with the corresponding groups in the Index of Prices of Consume. The indexes are compared to the base year 2021=100.

Weights – The structure of weights on Retail Trade

Food, beverages and tobacco in both specialized and non specialized stores 30%

Non-food Products in specialized and non specialized stores 40%

Retail sale of motor fuel 30% 

Model - The enterprises are selected from the Statistical Register of Enterprises. The enterprises with 1-4 employees are surveyed by sample survey, whereas the enterprises with 5 and more employees are surveyed exhaustively.

Data collection - The data are collected directly from enterprises. The interviewers collect the data from enterprises. The questionnaire is filled from the interviewers.

Indicators – The indicators are given in Index form, the quarterly changes are given in percentage, whereas the annual changes are given in percentage with reference to the base year, actually 2021=100. The data do not present absolute values.

Indexes – The indexes show the changes in time of a given variable, or of a group of variables. The Index Volume is calculated through the Laspeyres Formula. In order to avoid the prices impact, the indexes are deflated with the index of the price consume for the respective periods and corresponding groups.   

The annual change in percentage - it measures in percentage the change of economic indicators of the actual quarter compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

The quarterly change in percentage – it measures in percentage the change of economic indicators of the actual quarter against compared with the previous quarter of the same year.    

Revision – Indexes may be revised due to several reasons: additional information, the methodological changes, or revaluation of the used coefficients etc.    

Definition of the main indicators – Turnover is the total amount realized by enterprises during the month from the selling of goods, selling of own products and services excluded VAT.

Number of persons working includes all persons who actually work in the observed unit. There are included, owners and co-owners and family members that helps in the activity and employees in the end of the quarter.

Seasonal and calendar adjustment

Seasonal and calendar adjustment of monthly / quarterly time series of retail trade is done by using JDemetra+ 2.2.4 version software. The chosen model for the decomposition of time series is X-12 ARIMA, under specification X-13. X-12 ARIMA model is totally based in moving average. In all time series is applied the multiplicative decomposition and the direct approach. In calendar adjustment is applied the specification of trading day and a national calendar, considering both moving and fix national holidays. During the process of seasonal adjustment are treated even the special case occurred during the time series span, identified by software as outlier.