Developing and implementing a survey on Intermediate Consumption for the

service sector in Sweden

by

Annika Lindblom

Fredrik Nilsson

Statistics Sweden

Survey on Intermediate Consumption

• Important input to the National Accounts

• No regular data collection in this area

• A new survey is to be developed and

implemented

• From the Structural Business Statistics (SBS) we have estimates of total cost specified into:Expenses of Raw Materials and ConsumablesExpenses for resaleOther External Expenses

• Other External Expenses in the SBS is further specified into expenses for (specific for each sector):- Freight and transports- Temporary manpower- Computer program- Rent for premises- Purchased services and cost of administration- Advertising and PR- Other

The new survey

• Further specification of the three variables:- Expenses for raw material- Purchased services and cost of administration- Other

• Focus on producing estimates of cost distributions instead of producing level estimates

• Keep the sample size small (due to response burden)

• Coherence between the new survey and the SBS

The pilot survey

Main objectives of the pilot survey:• the possibility to collect the required

information• get feed-back on the questionnaire design• estimate relative distributions of Other

External Expenses and Raw Materials from the pilot survey and compare them with the estimated distributions from the SBS

The pilot survey covered the following sectors:

51: Wholesale trade and commission trade, except of

motor vehicles and motorcycles

55.1+55.2: Hotels + Camping sites etc.

55.3+55.5: Restaurants + Canteens and catering

establishments

64.2: Telecommunications

70: Real estate activities

74.1: Legal, accounting, book-keeping and auditing activities

74.4: Advertising

The pilot survey • All active enterprises in the Business Register

classified into NACE 51, 55, 642, 741 and 744 (the smallest not included)

• Stratification by sector and size• A simple random sample was drawn in each

stratum (total sample size 1 020 enterprises)• Voluntary to participate for the enterprises• Remainders by postal mail and telephone

The pilot survey

• Relative distributions (proportions) in each sector were estimated by a ratio, where numerator and denominator were estimated separately by a Horvitz-Thompson estimator.

• Non-response is compensated by re-weighting within each stratum (responding enterprises are seen as a simple random sample within each stratum from the surveyed population)

Questionnaire design

• Raw materials and consumables

– Different approaches to different sectors– Combined Nomenclature– Foreign trade statistics

Questionnaire design

• Other external expenses

– The National Accounts groups of products– General chart of account (BAS)– Requests from the National Accounts

NACE-Group

Number in sample

Number of responses

Un-weighted

Weighted

51 104 74 71,2 67,5

551+2 58 38 65,5 88,7

553+5 58 23 39,7 53,3

642 46 19 41,3 19,4

70 206 130 63,1 68,8

741 340 197 57,9 64,2

744 208 91 43,8 47,5

Total 1020 572 56,1 67,6

Number of responses

Distribution of Expenses for raw materials and consumables

Variable NACE 51 %

NACE 551+2 %

NACE 553+5 %

Specified in NACE 51 88,8

Food and coffee 57,9 63,0

Beer 6,1 14,7

Wine 7,4 7,7

Spirits 3,5 6,4

Non-alcoholic beverages 2,3 3,8

Other 11,2 22,9 4,4

Proportion of Other external expenses in the SBS and in the TFF

NACE-Group Unspecified in SBS Unspecified in TFF

51 44,5 6,1

551 35,1 1,7

553 41,9 3,1

70 27,2 9,7

741 66,3 9,8

744 27,6 8,3

Distribution of purchased services and cost of administration

Variable NACE 51 %

NACE 551+2 %

NACE 553+5 %

Cost of administration 22,2 25,8 32,0

Accounting services, legal costs

2,4 11,2 13,9

IT-services 16,7 20,5 5,4

Other consultancy services 33,8 13,9 8,1

Technological consultancy services

5,0 4,7

Bank services 3,1 10,2 21,3

R&D 4,0 0,0 3,2

Other 12,8 13,7 16,1

Estimated relative distribution of the Other external expenses

NACE 51 NACE 553+5

Variable TFF SBS TFF SBS

Freight and transports 17,1 13,0 0,3 1,2

Temporary manpower 2,1 1,5 4,1 1,1

Computer program 0,5 0,5 0,3 0,2

Other article for consumptions 1,0 1,2 1,4 4,0

Rent for premises 7,7 9,9 35,8 41,7

Purchased services and costs of administration

20,0 9,9 6,4 2,6

Advertising and PR 14,9 15,1 3,8 4,5

Other 29,2 44,5 35,7 41,9

Conclusions

• Collecting data on intermediate consumption for the service sector is feasible

• The use of income and cost statements have proven to be successful for the variable Other external expenses

• The relative estimated distributions differs between the SBS and the new survey, probably because of measurement problems

Future plans

• The TFF survey is fully integrated in the SBS from reference year 2006

• One third of the service sectors is to be surveyed each year

• Sectors with a large amount of raw materials will get a separate questionnaire