Index of household consumption of goods, January 2004

Seasonally adjusted figures show that consumption of food, beverages and tobacco are unchanged, while consumption of other goods increased by 1.3 per cent from December 2003 to January 2004. Purchases of vehicles and petrol increased by 0.4 per cent in the same period. The consumption of electricity and heating fuels increased by 7.4 per cent. The strong growth in electricity and heating fuels is mainly due to warm weather in December and lower temperatures in January.

The unadjusted volume index of commodity consumption was 6.5 per cent higher in January 2003 than in January 2002.

Revisions to the Index of commodity consumption

With this publication, Statistics Norway has established a revised structure for the commodity consumption. Both seasonally adjusted and non-adjusted index figures have been revised as a result.

Method differs from the index of retail sale

The index of commodity consumption describes the development in household consumption of goods, while the index of retail sales measures the development in retail sales. As opposed to the index of retail sales, the index of commodity consumption includes goods that are not sold in retail. It is based on sales of goods from additional industries and calculated with a weighting for the portion of sales to households. This may result in deviations in the development of the two indices. The calculation of the index of commodity consumption is based on information from the index of retail sales in addition to information on purchases of cars, sales of petrol and oil to petrol stations and the consumption of electricity unadjusted for changes in temperature.

The index of commodity consumption uses the same definitions and methods of compilation as the quarterly national accounts, and thus serves as an indicator of household consumption of goods in the quarterly national accounts. The individual components of the index are seasonally adjusted.

Timeliness is important in the release of statistics, and the index of commodity consumption may therefore have to rely on preliminary estimates in some cases. Such estimates are replaced in the subsequent release. This applies, inter alia, to figures on electricity consumption, where short-term statistics from the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) are used. Later on these short-term statistics are replaced by electricity statistics from Statistics Norway. This implies that the index of commodity consumption normally will be revised in the subsequent publishing.