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Efficient use of administrative data in the production of economic statistics in Finland

Keywords: sample and administrative data, short-term economic statistics, volume index of industrial output, value added tax (VAT) data, methodology

Statistics Finland has been a heavy user of administrative data in the production official statistics since decades. Today, 96 per cent of the basic data are obtained from administrative registers. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how the value added tax (VAT) data of the Tax Administration are used efficiently in the production of short-term economic statistics. The focus will be on a statistical production process that combines the VAT data with sample data on enterprises.

By means of case studies with the index of turnover and the volume index of industrial production (IPI), the paper will present some of the advantages that have been gained and some of the challenges that have been encountered when using this combined method. The revision to use both administrative and sample data for the volume index of industrial production was launched in 2010. Reversed liability for value added tax was introduced in construction services in April 2011. The revision caused changes to the monthly data used as the data sources for the index of turnover. The paper will present how this change in the data was dealt with in the production of statistics.