1. Introduction
Statistics New Zealand is progressively redeveloping a suite of business price indexes (BPIs) comprising the Producers Price Index (PPI), the Farm Expenses Price Index (FEPI) and the Capital Goods Price Index (CGPI).
As part of the redevelopment, New Zealand practice for various aspects of BPI compilation has been compared with the practices of five other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.
This article looks at how BPI results are published in New Zealand and in the five other countries.
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2. International practice
For international comparison, Statistics NZ selected five OECD countries representing Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia: the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, the United States, and Japan. They were selected because of the reputation of their economic statistics and availability of comprehensive documentation in English. The sources used for this article (see the references section) are available to the public and may not reflect the most current developments in those countries.
It is worth noting that each of these nations have much larger economies than New Zealand, making possible certain sampling procedures that may not be practical in a nation of four million people. It may be a worthwhile future endeavour to make a similar comparison with a second tier of smaller OECD nations, such as Ireland.
Statistics NZ tried to make the closest possible match with New Zealand’s BPIs in terms of data coverage. Each nation arranges their indexes slightly differently. For ease of comparison, the indexes under consideration are included below.
The United Kingdom Office for National Statistics (ONS) PPI suite includes: home PPIs (domestic), export price indexes and import price indexes. Capital goods are included in their coverage.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) produces a suite of PPIs, an import price index, and export price index. The PPIs include two services: transport (freight) and storage division, and the property and business services division.
Statistics Canada produces an Industrial Product Price Index (IPPI), Raw Materials Price Index (RMPI) and four service PPIs (accounting services, informatics professional services, consulting engineering services and traveller accommodation services). Canada's Machinery and Equipment Price Index parallels New Zealand’s CGPI, and their Farm Input Price Index (FIPI) parallels our FEPI.
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces a PPI that includes capital goods. The PPI covers almost the entire output of domestic goods-producing sectors, and many service industries. Import and export prices are collected and indexed separately.
The Bank of Japan produces the Corporate Goods Price Index composed of the Domestic Corporate Goods Price Index, Export Price Index, and Import Price Index; capital goods are included in its coverage. They produce a separate Corporate Service Price Index.
The New Zealand suite of PPIs comprehensively covers both goods-producing and service industries.
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3. Publication of results
Statistics New Zealand
The business price indexes are compiled and published quarterly, two to three weeks into the second month following the end of the reference quarter. There is no access to figures prior to the release of the data. However, a media conference is held for the PPI and the CGPI on the morning of the release. The official embargo time is 10:45am on the day of publication with results being available on the Statistics New Zealand website, as well as through email notification. The Hot Off The Press publication provides a commentary on the results, including the headline figures and the main contributions to the overall movements. A media release is also produced which highlights the main results. Customised indexes are available on request, with an associated charge. FEPI results are made available in table format with the PPI release.
All results are final when they are first published. The BPIs are revised only for significant errors (that is, an error resulting in a change of three or more index points). Revisions are not made where current prices become available (when lagged prices were used in the calculation), or where actual prices used are adjusted in retrospect. Revisions are notified by an R beside the revised number in the release tables.
Office for National Statistics (United Kingdom)
The ONS's First Release is the earliest publication of the PPI, released on the second working Monday of the month after the reference period. This contains indexes at the division, subsection and all manufacturing levels. In order to exclude the more volatile industries, as well as those affected by excise duties, input and output series for manufacturing industries excluding food, beverage, tobacco and petroleum industries are also published. A brief commentary is provided on the headline figures. More detailed indexes are published in three monthly business monitors: PPI, aerospace and electronics cost indexes, and price indexes for current cost accounting. Annual PPI data are included in the Annual Abstract of Statistics. Data published on their website, www.statistics.gov.uk, is available free of charge to print or download. There is a charge for data supplied in other formats or for customised data, for hard copy and CD-ROMs.
Australian Bureau of Statistics
Producer and international trade price indexes are all compiled and published quarterly. No advance figures are available. In order to ensure that users of these price indexes are treated equally, strict security is maintained on the figures before their official publication. This means no information about the figures, of any kind, is released before the official embargo time of 11:30am on the day of publication, approximately four weeks after the end of the reference quarter. Information is made available on the ABS website, through email, and also by Rich Site Summary (RSS) feed. RSS feed is an XML text format that allows users with the appropriate news reader software to have new information or content from a website delivered to them automatically, without having to go to the website to get it.
All producer and foreign trade price index figures are released as preliminary figures at the time they are first published. Since most of the required basic prices are collected before compilation, the index numbers are not usually subject to revision. However, occasionally revisions may be necessary as a result of undetected errors in the raw price data, retrospective price changes, or errors in compilation.
As well as various series of index numbers, the ABS also publishes a selection of other figures – percentage changes, index points contributions and index points changes. A large volume of unpublished figures is available on request, subject to confidentiality.
Statistics Canada
The Industrial Product Price Index (IPPI) and Raw Materials Price Index (RMPI) are published together approximately one month after the end of the reference month.
Selected indexes are published with commentary about four weeks after the reference period in Statistics Canada’s The Daily following a pre-announced schedule of release dates. The Daily is released at 8:30am eastern time. Simultaneously, all indexes become available on their website (www.statcan.ca). The Statistics Canada website also offers an RSS feed specifically for price-related news releases.
The IPPI and RMPI are subject to revision for six months (eg when the July index is released, the index for January becomes final). Exceptions to this rule are announced. All service PPIs are subject to revision for two years, except the Traveller Accommodation Services Index, which is final at publication. The Machinery and Equipment Price Index (MEPI) is subject to revision for five quarters.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (United States)
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has three main PPI publication structures:
- Industry-based – the PPI publishes over 600 industry price indexes in combination with over 5,000 specific product line and product category sub-indexes.
- Commodity-based – the PPI publishes over 2,000 commodity price indexes organised by type of product and end use.
- Stage-of-processing based – the PPI publishes aggregate price indexes organised by commodity-based processing stage. The three stages of processing comprise finished goods; intermediate materials, supplies, and components; and crude materials for further processing.
Other publication structures include:
- producer price indexes by durability of product
- special commodity groupings (eg fabricated metal products, construction materials, and selected textile mill products).
Producer price indexes are published monthly. First-published data for a particular month as well as the revisions from the previous four months (final figures) are available the following month, usually during the second full week. The PPI News Release presents an analysis of the movement of key aggregate indexes during the month, along with tables containing indexes for major components of stage-of-processing and industry aggregate indexes. It is made available at 8:30am eastern time on release day.
The PPI Detailed Report is printed and mailed during the middle of the second month following the reference date. Containing all the aggregate industry levels and detailed commodity level indexes, it is the official and most comprehensive publication on producer prices. It also includes text, tables, technical notes and special articles. It is published monthly in a bound format for a subscription fee.
PPI Summary Data News Release is a four-page summary of important PPIs. The summary also indicates 1-month and 12-month percent changes. Delivery to subscribers is about two weeks after the release date. The publication is free.
The Monthly Labor Review provides monthly PPIs for selected series as well as occasional technical and analytical articles on the PPI. This publication provides summary data and analytical articles for the other BLS statistical programmes as well and caters to a very broad audience. It is published monthly in a bound format for a subscription fee.
A limited amount of historical data is made available through the Handbook of Labor Statistics.
Electronic access is available through a website (www.bls.gov/data/home.htm) and by file transfer protocol (FTP) service (ftp.bls.gov).
The bureau maintains a 'fax-on-demand' service which enables customers to request a fax of BLS press releases, historical data, and technical information. The service is provided 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The BLS offers a 24-hour recorded telephone hotline which includes frequently requested monthly PPIs and also an announcement of the next release date.
After an index is first published, it is subject to recalculation to take into account late survey reports and corrections by respondents. Every index is recalculated only once on a systematic basis — four index months after being first published. In addition, previously published seasonally adjusted indexes are subject to change in January when new seasonal factors are calculated and applied to the most recent five years of data.
Bank of Japan
Preliminary figures are published on the eighth business day of the month following the survey at 8:50am, both in print and on the Bank of Japan website (www.boj.or.jp/en/). The annual average index is published simultaneously with the December and March figures.
Indexes are periodically revised twice a year. In cases of serious errors that affect the index level of ‘all commodities’, indexes are promptly revised irrespective of this schedule.
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4. Summary
In terms of speed of publication, Japan and the United Kingdom are clear front-runners, first releasing PPI information within two weeks of the reference month’s end. In both cases, these are limited releases and commentary on headline figures, which are followed later in the month by more detailed figures. The United States follows closely, releasing its headline figures and analysis during the second full week of the month after the reference month, although its complete figures are not available until the middle of the second month after the reference period.
Canada and Australia publish their PPIs approximately four weeks after the reference period (monthly in Canada’s case, quarterly in Australia’s). New Zealand is a bit later, with results being released approximately six to seven weeks following the end of the reference quarter.
Users are increasingly accessing data in electronic format, so standards of availability are of particular interest. While not a leader in publication speed, Statistics Canada’s ease and availability of data through the web is notable; all lower-level indexes are available on the site. The websites of Statistics Canada, the Office for National Statistics, and the Australian Bureau of Statistics all offer RSS feeds, which bring releases directly to the user’s desktop.
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5. References
Statistics New Zealand (Dec 1999). "Producers Price Index: Concepts, Sources and Methods", business-activity-stats-1999
Statistics New Zealand. "Information about the Producers Price Index (PPI)", http://www2.stats.govt.nz/domino/external/omni/omni.nsf/outputs/Producers+price+index
Statistics New Zealand. "Information about the Commodity Price Survey", http://www2.stats.govt.nz/domino/external/omni/omni.nsf/outputs/Commodity+Price+Survey
Statistics New Zealand. "Information about the Capital Goods Price Index", http://www2.stats.govt.nz/domino/external/omni/omni.nsf/outputs/Capital+Goods+Price+Index
Statistics New Zealand. "Information about the Farm Expenses Price Index", http://www2.stats.govt.nz/domino/external/omni/OMNI.NSF/Outputs/Farm+Expenses+Price+Index
Richardson I, Office for National Statistics (UK) (2000). "Producer Price Indices: Principles and Procedures".
McLennan W, Australian Bureau of Statistics (Feb 1997). "Analytical Framework for Price Indices".
McLennan W, Australian Bureau of Statistics (Mar 1999). "Producer Price Index Developments".
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (Act 2001). "Rebasing of Selected Producer Price Indices", http://www.bls.gov/ppi/ppibase.htm
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (Nov 2004). "PPI Frequently Asked Questions", http://www.bls.gov/ppi/ppifaq.htm
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (Mar 2004). "PPI General Overview", http://www.bls.gov/ppi/ppiover.htm
United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (Sep 2003). "BLS Handbook of Methods", http://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/homtoc.htm
Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (Oct 2004). "Guide to Official Statistics in Japan", http://www.stat.go.jp/english/index/official/index.htm
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