Index of household consumption of goods, January 2006

The decrease was mainly due to that purchase of vehicles fell 11.0 per cent from December 2005 to January this year. The consumption of food, beverages and tobacco went up 4.0 per cent and thereby pulled the index in the opposite direction. In this commodity group the greatest contribution to the growth was the consumption of groceries, which increased by 6.1 per cent from the previous month, according to the seasonally adjusted figures. Without the fall in purchase of vehicles, the volume index would increase by 1.7 per cent.

In the same period the consumption of electricity decreased by 0.9 per cent. This could be related to the relatively warm weather Norway experienced in January. The temperature was above normal.

The unadjusted volume index of commodity consumption was 5.9 per cent higher in January 2006 than in January 2005. This increase must be seen in the light of the low consumption of goods in January previous year.

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 trade. Thus, 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. This may result in deviations in the development of the two indices.

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.

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.