1. Detailed Average Prices Project Experience of Statistics Belgium
Workshop Multi-Purpose Consumer Price Statistics and the PRIX Programme
Den Haag, June 2013

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

3. 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

4. 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.

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. 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

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

10. 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

11. Thank you for your attention!