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Background
OECD has collected information on countries' work on services producer price indices (SPPI) since 1997. Reflecting the scarcity of SPPIs in countries, only a minority of OECD member countries were covered in the inventory at that time. In 2002 the inquiry became a joint venture between OECD and Eurostat and now all OECD countries and EU Member States are included in the inventory. Information is collected also for several countries that are associated with the Voorburg Group. The present information is from the beginning of 2008 and covers 45 countries.
Contents of the inventory
Countries are asked to provide the following information:
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a)
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information on whether or not countries collect services producer prices or have plans to do so.
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b)
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if a SPPI programme has been established:
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i. which activities (ISIC Rev 3.1 or NACE Rev. 1.1) are covered;
ii. start date of SPPIs;
iii. frequency of price collection;
iv. number of price quotations;
v. pricing methods used;
vi. contents of SPPIs by product (CPC Ver. 1.1 or CPA 2002);
vii. details of publication of services PPI data
viii. methodological publications/papers
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c)
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a contact name for exchange of information
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An important aim of the inventory is to foster the development of SPPI methodology and strive to improve the comparability of SPPIs across countries. Therefore, countries are asked to identify what pricing methods they are using in various service activities. The classification of pricing methods is based on the definitions developed in the PPI Guide (pdf). Results of this part of inventory are still partly experimental because the definitions of pricing methods are subject to further development. Such developing work is ongoing in the Voorburg Group.
For the moment at least some SPPIs are available in 25 OECD countries and most of the others have established a programme for their development (see table xls). The service activities that are best covered are shown in the graph. There are 28 service activities (by 4-digit level of ISIC) for which an SPPI either exists or is under development in more than one third of OECD member countries.
Coverage of SPPIs (xls) varies in countries. Countries may target either the whole service output independently of client or include only services to business in an SPPI. However, the difference between these alternatives is not necessarily significant because service activities covered in the inventory are predominantly business services.
Frequency of price collection (xls) varies country by country. A monthly SPPI programme is more common outside Europe whereas most European countries have launched quarterly SPPIs. Also annual or semi-annual data collection is in use in some countries.
Detailed information on SPPIs by activity:
Service products used in the compilation of SPPIs
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By ISIC / CPC (xls); all countries that provided information by product
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By NACE / CPA (xls) ; EU member states and other countries participating in the Eurostat statistical programme
Other information
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