Index of household consumption of goods, April 2004

Seasonally adjusted figures show that all but one of the consumption groups decreased in this period; consumption of other goods is unchanged. Purchases of vehicles and petrol decreased by 2.9 per cent from March to April 2004, concurrently consumption of food, beverages and tobacco decreased by 2.6 per cent. The adjusted figures show that the consumption of electricity and heating fuels decreased by 1.2 per cent in this period.

Corrections for the effect of purchases associated with calendar effects, such as Easter holidays, are rather complex in the seasonal adjustment of figures. The seasonally adjusted volume index of commodity consumption for March and April are therefore more uncertain than other months of the year.

The unadjusted volume index of commodity consumption was 5.5 per cent higher in April 2004 than in the same month last year. The growth in unadjusted volume index of commodity consumption for all groups was lower from April 2003 to April 2004, than from March 2003 to March 2004. Strong growth rates for the month of March are primarily due to the last week before Easter holiday occurring in March of the current year. The consumption of food, beverages and tobacco increased by 0.8 per cent from April 2003 to April 2004. In the same period purchases of other goods and purchases of vehicles and petrol rose by 9.6 and 7.1 per cent respectively.

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.