Detailed Average Prices Project Experience of Statistics Belgium Workshop Multi-Purpose Consumer Price Statistics and the PRIX Programme Den Haag, 20 - 21 June 2013 http://economie.fgov.be

Overview 1. Introduction 2. Provision of prices june 2010 4. Future challenges

Introduction Aim project: to use the available monthly data of the CPI/HICP to calculate indicative price levels on a regular basis for welldefined products and services Overall goal: temporal and spatial price comparison http://economie.fgov.be

Provision of prices June 2010 National average prices: Procedure existed before start of the project since Belgium has already a tradition in publishing average monthly prices of all products in the CPI/HICP.

Ex-post approach: “selecting those CPI/HICP price observations that match exactly the given product definitions” Number of products and observations in the project, by COICOP division   2010 Eurostat Belgium N prod. N obs. (+/-) 1 Food and non-alcoholic beverages 33 30 450 2 Alcoholic beverages and tobacco 5 400 3 Clothing and footwear 19 12 250 4 Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels 175 Furnishing, household equipment and routine maintenance of the house 11 10 200 6 Health 7 Transports / 8 Communications 9 Recreation and culture Education Restaurants and hotels Miscellaneous goods and services Total 90 71

Provision of prices June 2011/2012 Major changes compared to 2010: Increasing sample of products by 51 products (ex-ante approach) - Further automatisation of calculation Info brand products: predefined text free text (data cleaning) - Optimizing metadata: especially for electronic devices

Number of products in the project, by COICOP division   2011 Eurostat Belgium VC Ex-post Ex-ante Min Max 1 Food and non-alcoholic beverages 52 36 11 0,063 0,648 2 Alcoholic beverages and tobacco 5 0,067 0,19 3 Clothing and footwear 29 8 0,194 0,781 4 Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels 0,125 0,441 Furnishing, household equipment and routine maintenance of the house 23 10 0,117 0,695 6 Health 7 Transports 0,344 Communications 9 Recreation and culture 0,106 0,461 Education Restaurants and hotels 0,115 0,366 12 Miscellaneous goods and services 15 0,066 0,635 Total 157 69 51

Match product definition Electronic devices: separate price collection Product Shop Match product definition Total supply   N % fridge-freezer A 0,0% 109 100 B 1 1,6% 61 C 2 9,1% 22 washing machine 2,4% 82 3,9% 51 2,5% 40 microwave oven 3,6% 55 3 11,5% 26 5,3% 19 vacuum cleaner 1,2% 83 2,2% 45 1,8% 56

Well known brand / brandless: Different approach for different types of products - FMCG - clothing - electronic devices Input of PPP-colleagues was very important

Future Challenges: Further expand sample of products: representativity Belgian market Sample structure: analysis of scanner data of consumer panel research bought from a market research company Methodology changes HICP/CPI: possible use of scannerdata in the future for FMCG? Synergie between HICP/CPI and PPP: limited; extra cost DAP

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